Wings of Fate
by Sezthekitty
Summary: A young king has to find his mate by his 18th birthday, but what if that they've always been there, right in plain site? what could he possible do to find them? eventually YamixYugi R&R please.
1. Prologue

**A/N 23/03/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by** _Debbie the Fabulous_** after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her :)**

**i do not own YuGiOh - or any of the characters - but heck, i wish i did.****This first chapter is just like a prologue, so it'll be short, it's just a little bit on infomation and stuff before the point in the story that i feel like starting at.****A/N: Recently i've had this nagging idea in my head, trying to piece it together was hard, but i think i've managed to piece together what's going to happen in the first few chapters, or something around that. Either way, i wont be able to write anything till i've got this down.**

In this world, everything is based on wings; beautiful displaying wings. The bigger your wings are, the higher your rank and the more power you have. No one has bigger wings than the king – that's why he's the king – one from a rare and polished blood line that only leads to the best of all wings.

But this world is also split, almost like two that have merged together – one can't continue on without the other, just like the other can't live without the one.

It isn't really worlds, it's more races. You could consider it worlds; they sit side by side and either ignore each other or hug each other. It makes no difference.

One half is called lights; beautiful, shining lights sometimes referred to as angels, so commonly found with white, fluffy wings... You could almost say they're doves; innocent and pure.

While the other half are called darks, or shadows; strong and brutal darks. Some people consider them demons, but everyone's a demon in these worlds. It makes no difference. They are normally found with dark wings similar to that of a bat. Consider them black birds; the ones that stand out and bully the other smaller birds away.

There are also marks.

Marks apply to both lights and darks. These marks sit at the base of the wings, are normally clear to see, and help you find your soul mate. You can ignore them, but you'd be a fool to do so – after all, once you mate with your marked mate you gain power that can be ten times your previous. If you can't find yours by you 18th birthday they're considered dead – at least until found – and you're completely free to mate among others.

But if you have already met your mate – normally without knowing so – and you mate with another, your marked one will end up in unbearable pain, sometimes leading to death – but that's just in extreme cases. When you mate, your power increases, but if you don't mate with your marked mate then you only get half of the power that you would hope for if you were to mate with your marked.

Since your mark is at the base of your wings, if you have no wings you're considered "free for all," and are normally made into a slave; they are preferred as bed warmers than marked slaves considering how some mates act around their significant others.

If you have small wings, no mark (and are of low rank – extremely low), no wings at all, or sometimes even slightly under average wings, you will become a slave by birth right.

If you have large enough wings and good control over your power, you can make your way into high society, known as the "Upper" (but of course you need the approval, first). The Upper is naturally far better than the Lower; it's a clean and rich filled place that no one from Lower dares to step in.

Normally you'd have to be adopted from childhood to ever make your way into Upper from Lower, but even though there are special cases where some people managed to get in, it doesn't mean they felt welcome.

The kings' palace sits in the middle of the large Upper district, while the Lower district is scattered around the Upper, and from the palace you can see the clear difference in social class just by looking out a window at the city. It's no matter though; as long as only those with large wings live around the palace, everything is fine.

Out in the Lower, a storm was brewing as a panting woman with twitching, slightly over-average wings smiled fondly down at the new born baby in her arms. Such large wings for its' age it had! She'd be surprised if he managed to walk without falling over when he was older! She smiled and cooed down at him as his violet eyes beamed up at her in happiness.

She moved to sit down in an old breaking chair that looked like it would give way under any weight. Luckily it didn't, but in all honesty, she didn't care where she was, as long as her baby was safe.

Her hand slowly stroked over his tri-coloured hair as she thought back on her escape...

It was a close call – one that she had lost her mate in – but she'd had no time to mourn for him; her old home had been burnt to a crisp, and she had only just managed to save her son! She knew it would soon be her time to go, too... But she was glad that her father was still around; that was why she had come to the lower district: so she could give him her last dying wish – to protect her child from "them."

"Them," the enemies of the kingdom they lived in, would stop at nothing to make sure that the king's power would never reach its peak, but it wasn't about the kind this time; it was about the prince – the one who would become king.

And her poor, innocent baby boy had been thrown in the middle. She almost cursed her tri-coloured hair for it leading to such a thing; her child looked so much like the prince, she couldn't help but smile slightly at the irony of it.

Of course that wasn't the only reason; it also had to do with the small mark that sat at the base of the boys' wings; his mating mark matched the prince's. She feared for her child's life the moment she saw it and tried to pack up to run, but she sadly noticed too late and lost her husband for it.

She sighed and stood again, wrapping a piece of fabric that used to be part of her over-shirt around the small baby, then stepping carefully outside and glancing around before running out to find a certain better looking shack; her father's shack.

When she had found it, she couldn't help but smile at the memories that flooded back to her from her childhood. The memories, however, were not needed; her little boy's life was on the line.

She quickly but still somehow elegantly knocked on the door, looking around a little panicked as the door opened and she was met with the small grey haired man that she called her father.

"What is it my girl? Do you know wha – " The elderly man quickly stopped as he saw the tear stained face of his daughter holding a bundle close to her chest, burns and cuts littering her body.

"Come in, quickly," He said, ushering her in and looking around before shutting the door and letting her sit down on a chair.

"Th-they... They did it... They burned it to the ground...! They killed him..." The women finally said, breaking down in to tears, as he rubbed her back, trying to comfort her. It didn't seemed help much, but it was all he could do.

"There, there, now."

"Father... You know that it's dangerous for me to be here, but I had to come... It was for Yugi; if I didn't..." She just seemed to break down more as she kept up her rant through her sobs.

"It's okay, I know. Little Yugi's fine here with me..."

The woman looked up at her father and nodded. She handed him the bundle of fabric containing her son as she stood and wiped away her tears; she'd face her death with her dignity still in tact, she'd decided..

Yugi started to cry as he felt his mother's arms leave, and tried to reach out to her.

"Now, now, my sweet, I have to go. You be good for your grandpa, okay?" She placed a kiss on her father's cheek, then on her babies' forehead. At the door, she looked back at them one last time and gave a smile – the smile of a person going to their grave – but with life still strong in her eyes, she turned and disappeared past the door and into the night.

She had long ago sealed her fate. There was no going back from that moment. She had fought a hard battle, but they all ended the same; with her in the ground and no mourning to come.

A six year old boy with large-looking white wings perched on his back sat on a chair swinging his legs innocently while looking up at his grandpa.

"Why did the king die?" The child asked innocently as his grandpa looked up.

"Because some bad people wanted him dead," came the careful response.

"But why not go after the prince? He's the next in line," The child reasoned.

"There are some people who can't kill children. Anyway, no need to talk about this at your age, Yugi," He explained, ruffling his grandson's hair.

There was a short pause while Yugi thought about this before switching the subject. "Grandpa... Do you think you could teach me some covering magic? Or spells to hide things?" The child asked, beaming up to his grandpa.

"Now why would you want to know that kind of magic, child?" He asked, and looked carefully at his grandson; he didn't expect that to come out.

"Well, a little while ago, you said that I was marked to mate with the prince, but I don't want to mate with someone I don't love. I also don't want him to mate with someone he doesn't love." He said to his grandpa.

The elderly man's eyes seemed to widen for a moment as he though thought, before finally nodding.

"Okay. I'll teach you some, but really Yugi, you shouldn't even have to think of anything to do with mating at the moment." He chuckled while ruffling his hair again. Despite the fact this his grandson was both innocent and six, it didn't stop him from thinking carefully... Sometimes, anyway.

"Yay! Thank you, Grandpa!" Yugi cheered as he hopped off the chair and hugged his grandpa's waist; even though he was slightly short for his age, his grandpa was quite short, too, so it didn't really change a lot.

Yugi then let go and smiled as he walked to what he called his room, which was just a door leading to another small space in the hut that had blankets covering the floor. He didn't really go out a lot, and when he did, he just played along happily in the "garden;" the patch of land behind the hut that his grandpa grew things in. But he was content with his small life.

**A/N: and there you have it the prologue. it kinda failed after Yugi and his mother scene, sorry, but i really need to try and get that last bit in, it's kinda important for the whole story.**

**Any way, please review and thanks for reading :)**


	2. Beginning

****A/N 03/04/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by** **_Debbie the Fabulous_**** after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her along with rewording and all that stuff :)****

**A/N: Right, finally on to the first real chapter. I'll try to make it good, I'm also happy to accept any advice given - no one's perfect, I'm one of the least. Thanks to all of you who read or/and reviewed, it really meant a lot, thanks guys :) **

**Warning for slight Anzu bashing, i don't really mind her, i just don't really need her to be all 'pleasant' and 'happy family' with everyone in this. **

**So on to the chapter ~ **

A groan of displeasure left the lips of the well built king as he tried to detached something from the pale skin that was slowly turning a light pink from the grip of the thing on his arm. After a few moments of tugging and making sure that the thing knew that he was very displeased, and still getting no response from it, he realized was stuck with it clinging on to his arm.

"Anzu... could you please let go?" He asked as politely as he could to the "it" named Anzu, but it came out as more of a snarl.

"Come on, Yami-kins~! We might as well just mate now; after all, they're most likely dead by now..." Anzu said in a sickly sweet voice as she clung tighter to the poor king's arm, digging her long, claw-like nails into his skin.

"I already told you not to call me that," he replied, still trying to be polite but still sounding like he was snarling. He was holding himself back from mass murder, but to any onlooker, it looked the exact opposite – like he was about to become a homicidal maniac if he couldn't get Anzu off him.

"Anzu, please detach yourself from our King," Came a booming voice.

They turned to look at the owner of said voice and found a brunette with blue eyes that seemed to glow on the pale skin that was his body. Behind him were two large, dark blue wings that displayed power over any Lower.

Anzu finally managed to detach herself from the man, and pouted as she walked off, muttering insults to the brown-haired man under her breath, her slightly over-average grey wings ruffling themselves slightly with her annoyance on her back.

"Thanks, Cousin," The man said as he ran a hand through his tri-coloured, star shaped hair, a sigh slowly drifting from his lips as his wings stretched slightly, twitching in content.

"You're welcome, Yami, but you really should have learned your lesson by now – sneaking away from your duties will just put you in the firing line to be molested," The mocking voice of the other said.

"Seto, I've already finished almost all of my duties. I was just simply taking a breather from the stuffy rooms," He explained, leaning back on the rail behind him while closing his eyes in peace; they were standing in the gardens, one of the calmest places in the whole palace.

His blood-red eyes snapped open and landed upon a small boy that looked rather similar to himself, but smaller, more innocent, and most of all, wingless.

"S-sorry to interrupt you, my King, but the council requires you back in a few minutes," The small boy managed to speak as he kept his head down and bowed; simple servants such as he were never allowed to look upon the kings' face; it was a sign of disrespect and challenge.

"Very well," he replied.

A soft sigh left his lips as he looked over the boy again; he always felt a little weird around him, but he could almost be considered a friend... Or rather, a personal favorite when it came to servants. Every time Yami looked at him, he couldn't help but smile slightly, even if it was only on the inside.

When he looked at him, and felt like something was missing... Like something was missing, but he still felt it in the air... Yami couldn't really put his finger on it. "Yugi, you can go back to the servant quarters. We have no further need for you at the moment."

He bowed and mumbled a small, "Yes, my king," then dashed off, almost leaving a cloud of dust in his wake as if he had been held at gunpoint then let free. Yami stared after the boy and sighed, shaking his head; Yugi was always like that – he'd be nice and calm when doing something asked asked of him, but if given the chance to leave, he'd be out of there like he wouldn't live if he stayed.

Even if Yugi acted shy, Yami couldn't help but get the feeling of power emitted from the boy. He never saw where it came from, though, because it's impossible for a wingless to have power.

"Three months left, Yami," Seto reminded gravely, and walked with him out of the room.

Yami offered glum nod and a simple sigh as a reply before his actual statement.

"I know, but I'm not giving up; there's still a chance that they're alive, and I'm going to find them. There's no way in Hell that I'm going to be courting people like Anzu!" He snarled out in determination. For the life of him, he couldn't understand why it was so hard to find one person!

A chuckle was Seto's only reply to the unspoken question.

When they came to a pair of doors, they were pushed open, and lines of all kinds of people were trying to get near them.

Yami just sighed and continued to the door on the far side of the room, ignoring all of the "potential mates..." He'd only ever settle with his, and his alone.

A small boy with age-deceiving looks walked quickly down a hall way towards a pair of grubby-looking double doors, his tri-coloured, star-shaped hair swaying slightly as he pushed the stiff door open, letting a small pant escape from his lips.

He stepped inside, his feet padding along the floor as he heard the large door shut behind him. He walked towards the many rows of cots and sat down on the one in the far corner.

Almost all the cots were empty. The ones that weren't normally had unconscious people laying helplessly on them, but there were a few lucky people who were allowed to sleep at the time.*

Yugi was one of the more lucky servants among the bunch, mainly because he had the king in his favor; he would normally only be called for the king or the council, but it wasn't rare for him to be given jobs for other people since they were given to anyone who was free.

Just because Yugi was considered lucky, though, didn't mean he was treated any better; the many stains of blood and other things that covered his cot like all the others' proved it.

A few rows down, a lump on one of the cots had been tossing and turning helplessly for quite a while before sitting up and letting out a small whimper in pain. The lump slowly turned to look at Yugi as shaggy blonde hair let tired honey eyes peer from under its veil.

"Hey, Yug," was the simple reply from the lump as it let out a large grin.

"Morning, Joey."

Yugi gave Joey a small but bright smile as he stood up and went to help Joey. He looked over Joey, frowning and wincing as he noticed that some red seeped through the bandages placed firmly over his body.

Since servants were only allowed to sleep in boxers if they were boys, and small night gowns if they were girls, it was easy to see everyone, but it wouldn't take much more to see a splash of bright red across t-shirts so long and big that they qualified as dresses, ragged trousers worked down into shorts after many years of being a servant, and off-white bandages; servants weren't supplied things like bandages, so they had no way to change them without having to beg someone. Normally, they would end up using old bandages, even if they were already covered in dried blood.

Yugi let out a sigh; he really wished that Joey wouldn't keep coming back hurt, but they both knew Joey wasn't the type to stay quiet about something if he didn't like it, which meant he got regular beatings from guards.

It had also become a habit for people to take their anger out on Joey, so bandages were hardly ever off, no matter how dirty they got.

"It's fine, Yug. You know me – I'm Joey Wheeler! There's nothing to worry about," he tried, giving Yugi the thumbs-up while throwing another stupid grin onto his face, making Yugi giggle.

They were still able to laugh...

No matter what, they always laughed together. After all, they knew everything about each other. Nothing was a secret – nothing at all. They were so much alike, that they didn't see the point of hiding anything from each other. Not even the reason that they were both "wingless."

After all, the "wingless" had to stick together.

So Yugi, Joey, and two other servants that they had found in the castle stuck together, no matter what.

**A/N: Ok, there you go, the first official story chapter. This was kinda an introduction to after the prologue, as you can clearly see it's quite a few years after, so you can probably guess that they're around 17 years old. **

**Please review, and thanks for reading :)**


	3. Truth lies

******A/N 03/04/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by** **_Debbie the Fabulous_**** after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her along with rewording and all that stuff :) (please look at the poll on my profile to tell me if you prefer the edited version or the original, I'll just let you know this now, I wont be able to change back the first two chapters, since I accidently copied over the original .)******

**A/N: I was planning to update this on Friday, but I came across a bit of a writers' block... I tried hard to think of what could happen, but my mind wondered off to other stuff, so let's give this a shot and see if it works xD.**

**Thanks to all those who read, reviewed, alerted, or favourited; it really means a lot to me :)**

**Disclaimer : I don't own anything – ever.**

**Debbie Note (A.K.A: D/N OR B/N): I don't know if I've already fixed some of it from previous chapters, but to explain in case I did and you're wondering, some of Joey's dialogue is spelled phonetically; it's spelled to resemble how he says it. (I own **_**absolutely**_** nothing! The lowest form of nothing...)**

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><p>Yami, the current, young king, was normally a patient one, but now his patience was wearing thin, and it wouldn't be long before he snapped; time was running out, and there was no way in Hell that he'd do what the council, who were currently discussing the matter before him, wanted when time ran out.<p>

His 18th birthday was fast approaching, but as happy as the celebration should be, he didn't feel very happy about it because his certain someone was missing from the celebrations.

The king's finger twitched as the council continued to drone on about utter nonsense that held no need for his presence.

It wasn't until the council had moved on to a different topic that he had perked up, his head lifting ever so slightly as he looked down at the council from his place at the head of the grand table they were gathered round.

On said table were numerous scrolls, each covered from tip to toe with names; names of families from high power.

"These are the families that suspected to hold mating marks of high power - such as in this palace," Seto explained as he skimmed over them, quirking a small eyebrow before passing them to Yami with an impassive face.

Yami's eyes trailed over the names. Looking over the list, Yami couldn't place a large majority of the names, and the ones he had heard of didn't hold his mark.

"Mutou?" He wondered aloud as he identified the name. He'd never heard of it before, but he felt a vague sense of knowing coming from the name.

"If my memory serves, didn't Mutou's home burn to the ground about 17 years ago?" One of the council members spoke up as he called to another across the table.

"You're correct. Everyone died, but I think there's still an elderly member of the family who lives in the lower grounds out of sight." Came another council member from across the table.

"I want to meet him," Announced Yami, sitting up with his full attention, earning many wide eyed stares and gasps. Some tried to speak up, but lost the will to speak when Yami had flicked his eyes over them; as kind as the king was, he was extremely dangerous when angered.

"We'll accompany you," Two of his friends called from their places at the table; Mariku, the high and powerful lord head of the Royal Guard, and Bakura, the feared high lord known for taking over prison duties and "collecting" information from prisoners

Yami offered a nod and a simple, "We leave at noon," before turning and walking out of the room with his head held high.

Yugi grimaced as he checked over Joey's wounds again; after a long day of working, Joey's wounds had doubled, some bleeding while others healed, none healing as quickly as they should or as Yugi or Joey wanted.

Yugi sat cross-legged on his cot, sighing as he tightened the blood-stained bandages around Joey, and apologizing when Joey winced in pain from the tightness.

"We might have to go 'there' again," he mumbled to Joey, keeping his voice low; no one else was in the room, but that didn't stop them from being worried.

"If we hafta, bu' I'll be fine," Joey said, pulling on a grin as the door opened, showing a white-haired, pale boy with large brown eyes.

The brown eyes looked around the room before stopping on Yugi and Joey, suddenly filling with concern as the boy padded over to them.

"Hello Yugi, Joey," He said quietly as he sat down on the cot with them, cot creaking with the extra weight.

"Hello, Ryou, how have you been today?" Yugi greeted with a small smile.

"Fine, thank you," he replied, eyes running over Joey's wounds. "You should really get those healed Joey," he voiced quietly, eyes welling up slightly in concern.

The door opened again, showing a tired looking, blonde haired boy with golden tanned skin.

"Hello, all." He greeted, making his way over and pulling on a small grin as he sat down on the cot opposite them. The poor cot looked like it would cry if any more weight were added.

"Hey, Malik," Joey greeted, giving a wider a smile in return. "These two uh bein' worry-warts agai'," he said with a little laugh, his and Malik's smiles growing larger.

"We can always cover you while you go 'there'," Malik suggested, talking more to Yugi than Joey, but still grinning away.

Yugi nodded in thanks to Malik, giving a small smile that grew into a grin; it didn't matter if they were hurt – they were all together, the way it should be.

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><p>Standing outside a small, well-kept hut stood a group of four, with some others around them. No one took notice of them because not many people were out and about; only small children who were too busy playing with sticks to notice the high and powerful oddity that stood in the Lower.<p>

Raising a hand, King Yami knocked on the door, earning a few creaks from inside. They waited a short amount of time before the door opened to show a small elderly man who seemed to be rather content at the moment.

The man's purple eyes skimmed over the presence of the people in his doorway for a moment before bowing.

"My King! What a surprise! If I may ask, what are you doing here?" The elderly man dottered, not seeming as nervous as most in the king's presence. Even with his boldness, though, Yami could still feel the fear emanating from the old man.

"Solomon Mutou, correct?" Ask Yami, red eyes taking in the elderly man's appearance.

"You are correct."

"You used to be in the old council before you quit." The King stated.

"Ah, yes you are right on that one," The man replied, looking over the others.

"May we come in?" Yami asked.

He watched the man pause before carefully nodding and opening the door wider before stepping back to observe four of the young men walk in, the others waiting outside.

"How may I help you?" Solomon asked carefully.

"It's about the Mutou family." Yami stated, getting straight to the point.

"What about my family?"

"I want to know why no one knows anything about it, why the house was suddenly burned to the ground about a year after I was born, why no one has spoke of said family since, and why you're the only living member," he stated simply and gruffly, looking Solomon in the eye for most of it.

He wanted answers; there was something about all of these happenings that irked him.

"If you really must know, while my daughter was in labor, the whole house was thrown upside-down. The house was burned down while she was recovering and no one could do anything to stop it from happening. I didn't live there, since I lived here on the outskirts; I was tired of a big life. All I am aware of is the fact that I had a grandson, and he went with my daughter. Why no one's spoke of it, that's because there was a lot of confusion concerning how the house was burned down; a large majority of people pointing fingers accusingly. It was better to let it rest," The elderly man answered as truthfully as he could – some more than others.

"I have a feeling you're not telling us everything, Mr Mutou," Seto intervened.

"Young man, I may be old and wise, but I do not know everything. Even if I did, I am not the one to tell you," He reprimanded.

That shut them up; they came for answers and would leave with them, but still, they felt like something was missing.

"Gramps! Gramps!" Came the voice of a child as the door opened, showing the small boy.

"What is it, boy?" The elderly man said softly.

"My friend fell over! He's hurt," The young boy sniffled, looking up as Solomon laid a hand on his.

"We better go help him, then," Solomon replied, giving a small smile to the boy before he was hugged around the waist and patting the boy on the head. "If you'll excuse me," he said to Yami before turning to the boy and leaving the hut, the little boy pulling him along by the hand, never once had the boy looking at or noticing the other people.

They were almost glad for that.

Yami watched the man's back disappear as he left the hut and stepped outside.

There was something about that man that was familiar... He couldn't put his finger on it, but something was there – something that he had seen before.

Yami just shook his head; he must have been imagining it.

...But he still couldn't brush off the feeling, and he just had to find out.

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><p><strong>AN: There you go, the chapter, I'm not sure if it's too short or what. But either way, I hoped you like it, I should update soon - maybe in a week or less.**

**I just learned how to do a line break on here, yay - I've been trying forever xD.**

**Thanks for reading and please review :)**


	4. Bathing truths

**A/N 03/04/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by Debbie the Fabulous after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her along with rewording and all that stuff :) (please look at the poll on my profile to tell me if you prefer the edited version or the original, I'll just let you know this now, I wont be able to change back the first two chapters, since I accidently copied over the original .)**

**A/N: Sorry this is kind of late - even though I didn't give a date - I was planning to update on Friday, but Friday was a bit difficult to write one, then I was planning to update on Saturday but I was dragged out by some friends and when I came back my fingers were frozen and hard to type with. So now I shall update.**

**Thank you so much! So many people have reviewed on this story, it makes me really happy - also a big thanks to anyone who has read, alerted or favourited (and of course reviewed but I've covered that). It really means a lot to me :D**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything, full stop.**

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><p>Joey let out a sigh as he dipped himself into the water, the light glow the water gave off coating his body.<p>

He let out a soft hiss as the water started to lick over his wounds, eyes turned towards the scenery that surrounded him; large trees draped over each other as they parted above, allowing moonlight to skim across the lake that he was currently in.

Yugi started to wash Joey's wounds and smother them in water and a pile of old, used, blood-stained bandages beside his knees, and sighed as he ran a damp cloth over Joey's back. Yugi tried to stop himself from grimacing at the site of it; many large gashes and multiple, horribly colourful bruises trailed over it, and there was a suspiciously foot-shaped bruise that sat right in the center.

Yugi's feet were sore from walking all the way, and he had a few wounds, but they weren't nearly as bad as Joey's. There were many other reasons why he was careful to step into the lake and just perched on the edge. The main reason was that the water in the lake uncovered and destroyed any spells on the current person. Joey also had spells on him but it wasn't that bad for him, since his spell didn't take nearly as much time to cast.

That's why two large, white-feathered wings currently sat for all to see on Joey's back, twitching and moving and stretching out. Normally his wings would be folded in such a way that, with the cover spell on, no one would notice or be able to hurt them, but sometimes things didn't work out well, and he had many torn feathers among long, gentle, sharp-edged ones, like he did now.

Joey hissed again and moved around as the cloth brushed over some of his larger gashes; the smaller ones had already started to heal and were slowly, but surely, closing up. Even so, there were still many other problems.

The smaller of the two was constantly on guard as he sat, slowly covering Joey's back in the magical water.

He had to be alert and on watch; if they were caught here, they'd be even worse off than before; they were considered wingless, so they weren't even meant to be touching this water, let alone being away from the slave chambers bathing in it.

Life was hard, but they had to live with it, there was no other way in their eyes. They had to hide their secret and hope that no one ever found out.

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><p>Yami sat on a chair at a long, empty table currently covered in books and scrolls that contained information about the families in the city.<p>

His fingers trailed over the scroll currently in his hands until he stopped on the name Mutou; for the past... He didn't even know how long, but it had been hours, for sure, he had been flicking through the history, trying to find anything that he needed to know.

He couldn't put his finger on it, but he felt like something was missing, as if there was a large gap in the elderly man's story that he purposely skipped.

Whether the elderly man was hiding something from him, he didn't know, but he wanted to.

So far, all the information that he had come across was that the Mutou house was burned to a crisp, leaving only a simple pile of ashes, and that the daughter of the elderly man was found dead too a little too far from the house for the Solomon's story to hold any credibility.

And the poor woman looked like she was tortured before her death!

Yami ran his eyes over the description and winced; broken limbs, and wounds that obviously came from a blade – she looked like she'd been stabbed and cut multiple times over.

That was too much for anything to be an accident. She had basically been beaten into the ground. But the thing that had Yami even more confused was that she was said to have a small smile on her lips, even in death.

To Yami, something was just not right. He felt a shiver crawl up his spine just thinking about it.

That was when he decided that he wouldn't just give up; he would find out.

He'd make it his mission to do so.

Still, he couldn't help but feel that this new task had a time limit, so he mentally set it for the date of his 18th birthday.

He'd find out for sure.

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><p>Joey shivered as Yugi ran the cloth along his mating mark – a small mark that resembled a dragon head. He really didn't understand it much, but every time he saw it, he imagined a large dragon.<p>

Even though many others didn't see it, he did.

Yugi was still in his perched position by the side of the lake as he dipped the cloth back into the water and ran it along some more of Joey's wounds. He was healing well, and though not all of the wounds had completely healed yet, he was at least glad that the bleeding had stopped.

Yugi's eyes flicked up to the moon and sighed; they would have to leave soon. They would be in trouble – in more ways than one – if they were found here, especially with Joey's current appearance; with his wings on display, there would be many questions.

Too many questions that didn't need to be answered.

From the distance, Yugi heard quiet mumbling noises.

People were coming.

He started to panic and quickly stood up, Joey following suit; they had to get out – fast.

Yugi made a run for a group of large trees with Joey close behind, still dripping wet, but it'd dry soon.

Joey had slipped on what little clothes he had as he hid behind the tree with Yugi.

They watched like hawks as High Priest Seto and Head of the Royal Guard Marik emerged from the trees on the other side of the clearing.

The were stuck in a deep conversation, so didn't notice the two slave boys creep away from the lake and deeper into the forest.

Yugi froze for a second as he remembered something and gulped; he was sure they would notice the blood-soaked bandages so carelessly left at the edge of the always clean lake.

He chanced a glance back from their place, turned his gaze to the high priest as he knelt down by the area they had been in, and couldn't take his eyes off the scene as the priest picked up the bandages and inspected them.

Joey looked over at Yugi and tried to appear calm; he had already cast the spell upon his wings to hide them from the world, but while he had been doing so, he hadn't been paying attention to the scene.

This was bad, they both knew it.

Seto's full attention was on the blood-soaked cloth in his hands; from the second he had touched it, a shiver had been sent up his spine. It wasn't pleasing, but it also wasn't displeasing, and he knew something important was connected with it.

He had come to the lake to restore his energy and relax a bit after a long day of work, so of course he didn't expect to find bandages soaked in blood lying at the water's edge. He was very aware that this lake had healing magic, but never before had he seen so much blood on so few bandages – let alone beside the lake.

The priest didn't know why, the more he looked at the bandages, the angrier he got.

He felt worry course through him, but he didn't know why; he never got worried unless something concerning his cousin or other important matters happened.

He didn't get worried by looking at some bloody rags.

Seto sighed and put the soiled cloth to the side, wary as he saw from the corner of his eye what looked to be a large wing. As soon as he gave his full attention to the sight, it was gone, and there was nothing but trees in that direction. He sighed again, and disrobed himself before dipping into the lake as Marik had already done.

Seto tilted his head back, trying to think it all over, but gave up in the end; he couldn't find any legitimate reason to be angry or worried at the moment.

His eyes trailed over to the bandages once more, and he couldn't help but let a small smile take over his lips; he almost felt like he had just found out that an old family member was alive after thinking they were dead for so long.

It was so close to that feeling, but so much better, and he suddenly smirked.

This was the most emotional he had been in a long time.

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><p><strong>AN: There you go for this chapter, I hope you liked it. Remember to please review and thanks for reading :D**


	5. Dripping blood

**A/N 03/04/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by Debbie the Fabulous after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her along with rewording and all that stuff :) (please look at the poll on my profile to tell me if you prefer the edited version or the original, I'll just let you know this now, I wont be able to change back the first two chapters, since I accidently copied over the original .)**

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><p><strong>AN: Man when I'm sleeping you guys are reading all the way, xD. Thank you very much anyone who reviewed, alerted, favourited or read, it makes me really happy to know that there's some people who stop their time to do some thing like that :)**

**This is kind of a warning in advance; for a few chapters Yugi wont be the main focus, but don't worry, it's just building up to a big bang. Who will be the main focus, well you'll just have to read along XD.**

**Also this chapter may contain violence - but remember this is a T rated fanfic, so you shouldn't really bother reading if your afraid of seeing a little bit of violence.**

**I would also like to add, that If you read the Authors notes at the bottom you'll probably clear up a few questions if you have any about this chapter, it's kind of important for the story, so please make sure you read it - thank you :)**

**Disclaimer : I own nothing! I earn nothing from this story other than filling my small amount of free time.**

**Now on with the story :D**

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><p>Dim blue light shone down upon the buildings of the city as the sun started to perk up.<p>

The only people up and about were those from the Lower and slaves; slaves dashing to get to their places and prepare things for their masters, while others were only just waking up.

Yugi was one of the ones who should have been only just been waking up... If he had got enough sleep to wake up from; shortly after he and Joey had escaped the notice of the Priest and the Head of the Royal Guard, they had returned and gained what little sleep they could manage before their "head start" for the day.

Yugi was sitting on his cot, watching as his dear friend paced back and forth, rapidly wearing the floor and the bottom of his feet away.

Joey had been doing this for the past half hour now, mumbling to himself every time Yugi thought that he was sane enough to try and talk to him; they had been up most of the night, managing only to worry themselves more of the events that had happened the night before.

"Wha' am I goin' ta do?" Joey asked himself again.

The blonde had basically torn out his shaggy dog hair as he reminded himself of the problem.

Anyone else would be very confused as to why he was so worried about a simple slip of some bandages, but "anyone else" would have to be a human to not understand, and seeing that everyone in the city was a "demon," whoever heard about it would understand all too well if they knew about their situation.

At least no one knew, they reasoned, but Joey's behaviour had earned them quiet a few odd looks.

Joey's self-pitying whimpers started to die down, so Yugi thought it would be as good a time as any to share his brain with the blonde for a moment.

"You could always just make sure that you don't bleed..." He suggested, earning a frozen Joey for a few moments, followed by a head hung low in shame for not coming up with the idea himself, even after his half-hour of pacing.

Yugi was practically tackled as Joey pulled him into a large, bear-like hug.

"Thanks s'much, Yug! I don' know wha' I'd do withoucha!"

Joey then ruffled his friend's hair, completely and successfully bringing it from it's original pointyness.

"You're welcome, Joey," was Yugi's simple reply as he gave Joey a smile that he wasn't brought often during his time in slavery.

Yugi was released, and he watched his friend straighten himself up with a rather proud gleam on his face.

As long as Joey was happy then he would also be happy. The same went for Ryou and Malik, but Yugi couldn't help but feel that his idea would be harder to put into action in reality than it was in theory.

He would be surprised if he even made it through to the end of the day blood free...

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><p>Seto helped his cousin shift through endless documents about one thing and one thing only - the Mutou family.<p>

Several generations had been listed together on the multiple pieces of paper, with information on each member and everything about the family within the piles of documents.

But no matter how much he went through, Seto could still see a frown placed firmly upon his cousin's face.

The young king seemed troubled about some thing, but every time he asked, he was met with a confused stare and a period of complete silence before more pieces of paper were shifted through.

This was very confusing for him to process; as soon as they met, they had been stuck in a room filled with countless documents.

He found it even harder to work out what was wrong with his cousin, as he didn't even know what he was looking for.

Running a hand through his brown locks, he scanned over a piece of paper containing family information. There wasn't really anything special about this family other than the fact that they were listed among the most powerful and contained some family members who had been mates to the council and other important people.

After that, the family was just a mystery.

He didn't understand why Yami was so bent on learning about a family that had been long dead – other than the feeble old man who lived in a shack.

No matter how many times he went over the papers along with his cousin, he couldn't help but feel that he was out of a big loop.

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><p>Joey had been scrubbing the floors clean for hours now, but no matter how many times he got it spotless, it never stayed that way. He swore that the guards were doing it on purpose now; standing there and pointing to spots while people walked all over the freshly cleaned floor, making it so that it would need to be cleaned again.<p>

A soft sigh left his lips as he unclenched the fists with minds of their own before bringing himself back down to scrub again.

"Missed a spot," snickered a guard from behind him, torturing Joey in their own annoying way to his breaking point.

"Whatevah say, ya ugly brute," Joey muttered under his breath, loosing control of what little restraint he had.

He would have snapped long ago if it hadn't been for the fact that he wasn't as much pain as before; had he been assigned this two days before, he probably would have snapped before the first hour was up.

"What did you say, you little brat?" One of the guards snapped, marching over to Joey, stepping into and getting stuck in the bucket full of slightly soapy water that Joey had been using to clean the floor. "You'll pay for that, you little git!"

Without warning, Joey was punched in the face, punched in the stomach, and dropped back onto his knees where he stayed as the guard removed something from his belt with a familiar "click."

A harsh pain shivered through Joey as he felt his shirt rip where the leather whip was harshly struck against his back.

One: gulp. Two: mouth open. Three: scream. Four: something wet, trickling down his back. Five: dampening of the shirt.

Ten: scream. Eleven: scars reappearing. Twelve: sweat on the brow. Thirteen: curled over. Fourteen: shirt almost falling off. Fifteen, gathering of tears. Sixteen, tears falling.

Joey counted twenty-six whips of the leather on his back, though he felt the pain start to dull around twenty.

It was a pretty harsh today, he noticed; he had never gotten to the point of crying in front of the guards – his pride didn't normally allow it, but he had given in this time.

His lips were parted, and he was gasping for what little air he could gather.

Laying there in a pool of his own blood, it didn't take long for him to notice the main problem other than air; he'd failed the plan

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><p>Seto had somehow managed to leaved the king with his thin lie of, "I am going to return to my chamber to check over some business."<p>

Seto knew his cousin knew it was a lie, but he supposed Yami just wanted to be alone to ponder what little information they had found, and with as much as Seto worried for his cousin, of course he would get a bad feeling in his gut; something was wrong.

He didn't know what, but he knew something was wrong.

A sigh escaped his lips as he briefly scanned the bandages that laid on his desk; he hadn't managed to rid himself of them.

He didn't know why, but he just couldn't – not that he was complaining that this had been the most emotion he had ever felt. And to think, it came from some simple, old bandages...

He leaned back in the chair he was in and stared up at the ceiling; he had so many questions, but he had no idea who to ask – let alone where to find them.

He must have sat there, staring upwards with a frown planted on his face for about ten minutes before something came, ghosting into the room.

No. Not something – it was a scent.

A scent he recognized, and it made him incredibly angry.

It was the scent of copper that reached his nose; the scent of blood.

And not just anyone's blood, no; this was the blood smothering the bandages that laid on the table.

He jumped to his feet and walked out of the room, leaving his calmness completely to the wind.

This wasn't like him at all, but it didn't matter in his head; what he was doing was right, and he had a reason to do it.

What that reason was, he had no idea, but that didn't matter; it was worrying him how strong the smell of blood was getting as he followed the scent towards the source.

When he had reached the source, he saw a blood-stained blonde, laying at the feet of a guard who was connecting his whip back to his belt.

The high priest cleared his throat before asking, "What's going on here?"

But no matter how much he tried to hide his anger from his voice, it was still there, loud and clear.

His anger only seemed to grow as he got a better look at the blonde; he was clearly beautiful, even covered in blood, and reminded him of a beaten puppy as soft whimpers came from the him in the still-growing puddle of blood.

"H-High Priest, sir!" He exclaimed, and they quickly bowed to him before he continued, "I was just punishing this one," gesturing towards the blonde.

"Why? What did he do?" He wondered, his voice carrying over everyone present, not failing to bring a chill down their back.

"H-He... He... Uhh..."

The guard failed to come up with anything, and even if he told the truth it, would not be taken well by the priest – or anyone, for that matter; for all the blood on the floor, the guard could very well have been considered a killer if Joey died.

"You there," Seto called to two other guards by the door who seemed a little bit nervous, "take this... Man... To the prisons. Tell Bakura that he has a new friend for a while," He commanded, earning three looks of fear and surprise from everyone else as the first guard was dragged away by the other two.

Had Seto paid any attention, he might have laughed at the guard, kicking and screaming as he was taken away.

But he looked at the blonde on the floor, instead, a heavy sigh leaving his lips.

What was he meant to do now?

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><p><strong>AN: Like I mentioned this chapter and a few after would be mainly from people other than Yugi and Yami, I needed some others to put a plan in to action. Don't worry there will be more of Yugi and Yami, but not big bits for a little bit, because I need some drama moments and since I have problems with concentrating on more than a few characters in a scene it means I'll be able to put people like Ryou and Malik in a bit more - since they only have probably appeared once, so it's nice to have a change.**

**Thank you to **_**SanguisRubeus **_**for helping me with the plan, thank you so much! :D**

_**Darker Clouds**_ **I hope you got some of what you were asking for in this, I tried to do it in the best way I could :)**

**I think I should also clear something up, just in case people get confused, I mentioned here that they were 'demons', that's true, I didn't want them just to be people with wings, I kind of did also put a little bit about this in the prologue, but I think it faded out quite a while ago since I almost forgot about it myself - and I'm the one who wrote it.**

**I would also like to say that I don't think I made this clear at the beginning - because I kind of forgot, and I don't want to go back and edit it because it confuses me and Fanfiction has a moment where it hates me and throws a fit - but there will be other pairs in this other than YYxY, I've already made clear the SxJ pair, there's also the MxM and the BxR.**

**I hoped you enjoyed this chapter, thank you for reading and please review :)**


	6. Dense Water

********A/N 29/04/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by****_ Debbie the Fabulous_**** after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her :)********

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><p><strong>AN: Finally I'm updating, sorry it's a few days late - well I was planning on trying to update on Friday, so that's about five days late xD - You can all blame Yaoi for that, I got caught up watching JunJou Romantica and Gakuen Heaven, two lovely pieces of yaoi, just took up a lot of my time xD.**

**Thank you so much! Anyone who; read, watched, favourited or reviewed - thank you so much, your the best :D**

**I know that there hasn't been a lot of puzzleshipping but that will come, I promise when it does come it's going to come with a big bang so I hope that makes up for it xD.**

**Disclaimer : I think I have made this very clear over the last few chapters, I own nothing! - In this story anyway.**

**Now on with the story :D**

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><p>Something passed over him... He didn't know what, exactly, but he knew it was a feeling, for sure.<p>

Was it dread? Self-pity?

It's all the same.

He had become fully aware of the numbness and inability to move his body.

Was this what it was like to be dead? To lay there while the devil laughed at your pathetic attempt to move your limbs?

Maybe this was where the expression "Dead to the world" came from; he might as well have been dead – he couldn't even feel any air passing through the lungs of the small body that contained his soul.

He was sure that he would be looking down on his body if he could actually see; he felt trapped in a never-ending pool of darkness.

That's what it was like – dense, thick water submerging him, forcing him down, clinging to his very being as he attempted to shake it off, but to no avail.

What surprised him, though, was the fact that his state of mind was almost calm – almost.

"Calm" was something that hadn't come up a lot for him; he was the happy-go-lucky guy who would rather sleep than work, but would run to his death to save his friends.

No, "calm" was definitely not a word used to described him or his life, and thinking over his life made him feel smaller than he already was.

It was that self-pity again... He was drowning in a pathetic pool of self-pity.

Was he really to the point in his life where all he could do was cry, all alone, about how much his life sucked? That wasn't like him.

But then again...

Would you love your life knowing your frail, pathetic body had given way under some abuse, and you were now laying somewhere in your own filthy blood?

There was the self-pity again, consuming him even when he was trailing off.

What he wished for now was light – light in this never ending tunnel of darkness and pain, so he could forget the self-pity flowing freely from his being.

He wished for Yugi, his little light in that other pool of darkness and pain that was called life.

This was the coward's way out, wasn't it?

To die in self-pity, leaving everyone and everything because it's just so unbearable...?

It made him sick!

There were still people out there that needed him... He hoped at least.

He was pretty sure that Yugi needed him for comfort and friendship... Wasn't that was what he, himself needed most right now?

There was also her... She needed him, he was sure of it! He wouldn't just go dying on her, being the coward that she didn't see in him.

The pool was either getting smaller, or he wasn't as self-piteous anymore.

He couldn't die... Or rather, he didn't want to die; people still needed him, and he had to fulfill their wishes, along with his. They shared everything.

Did he just move...? He swore he just felt his finger move! He was still numb, but he could have sworn he felt his finger move!

Or was it the devil again, playing a cruel trick?

Was he really that entertaining to be beaten down so much?

It may have just been him, but he could have sworn he was thrown back into the pool of deep water.

Positive thinking really was difficult at times like this, but he wasn't just anyone – he was Joey Wheeler, and he always thought positively, no matter what.

And just as suddenly, the water was shallow again.

This was some indecisive water.

Either way, he still had many things to do in the world of the living... All he had to do was get there.

He wasn't ready to die, and he sure as Hell wasn't going to.

Was that another twitch?

Yes! He would make it! He would!

It was like being dragged out of cold water; all his senses were numbly flung back at him, and a groan erupted from his throat as he tried to hold back the need to cough, as if he were drowning...

But he was dry.

Now that he had his senses back, he was confused; there was no hard ground under him, no stinging of dirt in cuts, no damp puddle of dried blood, no sticky crimson sticking to his skin...

He didn't feel what he expected.

In fact, he felt the exact opposite – soft sheets that a slave would only feel while laying in a master bed, silk snaking itself around his torso, and cold cream on his wounds.

Now that was confusing.

He could barely bring himself to open his eyes, but he did, immediately closing them against the bright rays of light attacking them.

After a while, he tried again, eventually blinking his way into a comfortable relationship with the crude light and scanning the room.

Was he in the infirmary? What was he doing here?

Slaves rarely ever went to the infirmary, since it for actual members of the upper, not the slaves that lived there.

He managed to look over to the side of the bed he was on, where a beautiful women with long black hair, tanned skin, and a trained expression planted on her face sat while she was mixing what seemed to be a variety of herbs in a small bowl.

He knew who she was – it was hard not to know; slaves had all the important people in the palace grounded in to their brains so they wouldn't be disrespectful in anyway.

Ishizu – that was her name.

Lady Ishizu was a powerful healer, a close friend of the king, and a trusted member of the council, so he couldn't think of any reasons as to why she was here, by his bedside in the infirmary.

Joey thought over his options for a moment; she had yet to notice he was awake, let alone looking at her, but considering his weak state and the power she held, he would have to play nice – for now, at least.

Forgetting his wounds, he tried to push himself up, but stopped halfway as a wave of pain rushed its way down his back.

Ishizu surprised him by helping him up and turning him for treatment.

"Uhh," Was the only intelligent noise he could make.

"You're finally awake, I see. You've been out for quite sometime now. The High Priest was practically having a heart attack when he came to me," She said, unraveling the boy from his bandages and spreading a cool cream across his back.

Well, that cleared most of it up, but hang on a moment...

He thought over her words again.

Why would the high priest care about him? Not that he didn't know the reason, but the high priest shouldn't know!

"Uhh... Whaddya mean? Da high priest shouldn' care abou' meh... I've nevah even seen 'im b'fore," was all he could come back with in his poor accent.

Sometimes he felt he went overboard with it, but oh well.

"Wouldn't we all like to know," the healer sighed, still smearing the cold cream on his back. "Oh, and may I say that for a wingless slave, you have incredibly strong vibes of power... Especially in your sleep."

He felt a rather mistrustful and accusing stare on his back; she knew something... What she knew, though... He really didn't want to know.

In his shock, all he could manage was a stuttered and badly spoken, "I... I don' kn-know wha' ya mean," that was met with an indeterminable silence as she started re-bandaging him.

What scared him, though, was the fact that he had a feeling that what she was thinking was closer than he wanted to the truth.

Doing what he was doing was truly heart breaking; for the past few hours, Yugi had been crouched by Joey's dried blood with a cloth and a bucket full of blood-red water, scrubbing away, alone except for the short while that Ryou had been with him before being dragged off to deliver a message to Lord Bakura... What fun...

As much as he wanted to worry about Ryou, though, Yugi couldn't stop his mind from wandering to Joey; was he dead? Caught?

It didn't matter – neither was better than the other.

But even if Joey wasn't caught yet, just being around High Priest Seto could give away that he was indeed his marked mate, and then Yugi wouldn't be able to see Joey... At least, not for a long time.

Yugi truly missed Joey, so he didn't dare let himself think about the chance that he was dead somewhere – he was better off alive, anyways... Preferably next to Yugi, because it was the safer (if not more painful) option, but he was certainly better off alive.

But Yugi just kept on scrubbing down the floor, feelings very nearly getting the better of him.

He truly felt alone at heart now; he needed Joey with him for comfort and for friendship... He needed that silly grin to give him a small smile in the morning.

When a tear finally fell, he only felt worse, and he was almost tempted to just sit there and cry before a hand was placed on his shoulder.

Yugi looked up into the face of a blonde, tanned, feminine-looking boy; Malik.

Malik just gave him a small sad smile that said, "Everything's going to be all right..."

No words were spoken, but that's all Yugi needed to see; the smile that pushed him to wipe away his tears and give his own small smile back.

He'd never be alone; Joey wasn't dead, and he had Malik and Ryou for now, So everything would be all right.

A scared Ryou was a common sight, but this was the kind of thing that left him absolutely petrified.

He was standing outside of Lord Bakura's bath chambers, ready to give him a message.

He had already knocked lightly on the door and received the, "Go ahead," to enter... All he needed to do was brace himself to actually enter.

That preparing time was short-lived as Bakura yelled again, clearly annoyed to have been interrupted, then made to wait for something that must be important, otherwise he wouldn't have been disturbed.

Ryou nervously pushed open the door and stepped into the almost pitch-black room, the only light coming from a bath tub at the center where no other than Lord Bakura stood in all his glory, the water coming just below his knees as he stood to grab the fluffy white towel waiting on the ground.

The small slave winced as, even in the poor light, he noticed the water was actually a crimson colour; it was no secret that Lord Bakura was a blood-thirsty demon that even went as far to bathe in the blood those unlucky (but clean) enough to cross him.

Small drops of the red liquid still clung to the lord's form as he picked up another fluffy towel and ran it through his unruly white hair, stained a light pink in a few places.

After a second of running the towel through his hair, he wrapped it around himself, his eyes finally reaching Ryou, who was standing there shaking in his... Skin... He had no socks; he was a slave.

Ryou flinched as Bakura's eyes trailed over him as he was mentally prepared himself to if he needed to.

"Hello there... Little Birdy," Bakura said in a sweet voice, a small smile on his lips.

As sweet as those words were, though, Ryou felt like Death had just passed over him; those words should never come from Lord Bakura's mouth – ever.

"No, no... Birdy wont do; no wings... Hmm... Little Rabbit it is, then," He reasoned, Ryou's eyes watching in horror as a smirk spread itself across Bakura's lips; in the poor light, Bakura really had the face of a killer.

"Um... Eh..."

Ryou's brain wasn't working properly; nothing could mentally prepare him for standing before a lord, let alone Lord Bakura – the lord famous for killing and having people hung for doing wrong or being anything less than innocent.

"Well? What is it? Spit it out already."

The edge in Bakura's voice was always there, making Ryou feel like there was a knife to his throat.

Ryou gathered what little air he could and delivered his message, "H-high Pr-Priest has called f-for you to t-talk about so-something, along w-with the King and th-the Head of the R-Royal Guard..."

The little messenger watched as the lord before him seemed to ponder something before replying, "If that's all, leave."

Ryou did as he was told and dashed out at a speed no one could possibly match, leaving Bakura laughing to himself, "Just like a little rabbit," as he got "decent" to meet the others.

What in Hell's name could Seto want now?

If it wasn't important, he'd kill someone.

Yami had been tiredly but happily sitting in his chair, going through every record of the Mutou family, having yet to find something of use from them before someone rudely barged in, saying that his dear cousin needed to meet him... Not that he had anything against his cousin... It was just that he was doing something rather important.

To him, anyways.

Yami couldn't help but sigh as he marched down the many hallways until he reached a room that would certainly hold Seto; the study.

Pushing open the door, he wasn't surprised to see that Seto was in the room, but he was surprised to see that Marik and Bakura were also there.

It was sure to be important, then, but Yami couldn't help but worry for Bakura's sanity as he chuckled quietly to himself, smirking to no end.

Marik looked bored just standing there, shooting odd looks at Bakura, trying to figure out what was going through his head., and Seto just watched the whole scene before him before looking up to see Yami.

"Cousin," was his only greeting; there was no need for any more.

Realizing Yami was who Seto was waiting on, Marik got straight to the point, still glaring at Bakura as he asked, "May I ask, what is so important for all of us to be here?"

This straightforward question received the straightforward answer, "I think I have found my marked mate."

"What?" Was the expected answer from Marik and Bakura.

Nothing really changes, does it?

"You think?How can you _think_ you've found you're marked mate? You either have, or you haven't, " Yami urged.

He let out a sigh; now he had to point out some facts. He was sure that if he told the others he'd found his marked mate, he'd be on the other end of the line.

"He doesn't have a mark or wings, but his blood smells... Special... To the point that it makes me feel emotions I haven't felt in a while... And the amount of power he emits is far too much for a simple slave," Seto explained with a sigh; he had probably been thinking this over for a while, now.

"There's only one thing to do to clear this up then," Yami said.

The others in the room nodded in agreement.

It was going to be a long day.

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><p><em><strong>DN: I hope Joey's dialogue isn't too unreadable; I haven't watched Yu-Gi-Oh! in a while, so it's kind of hard to remember exactly how Joey talks. I could look up a single video, but I know **Sezthekitty** did an amazing job getting his character dialogue down, so all I actually had to worry about was exactly how he said it, and even that didn't need much change. (I hope you don't mind my little notes, but they won't show up often.)**_

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><p><strong>AN: And there we go xD. I think I wrote a little more than normal, but oh well. I don't know if I'm the only person on here who does this, but I normally only have to write a chapter once, rather than having to go over it loads of times, or rewrite it. This is the first time I've ever had to write something more than once, because the start of the chapter really sucked.**

**At the start of the chapter I kept mentioning 'dense water' well I was cooking some mac and cheese, and started thinking of Soul Eater then I moved on to thinking about this story, and the madness shown as dense water (Maka gets stuck in it and Soul has to pull her out of the 'madness') So I put self-pity as dense water xD. Or rather death in a way xD.**

**Anyway another thanks to anyone who reads this story and I hope that you continue reading.**

**Have a good day everyone, and please review :)**


	7. Lifting the mask

**A/N 29/04/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by Debbie the Fabulous after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her :)**

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><p><strong>AN: Ha ha ha... Sorry, late again . I really haven't been in the writing mode recently, I've been in the more 'dying from lack of sleep, but lets stay up all night' mode. **

**Thanks to all of those who; Read, reviewed, favourited or alerted it means a lot to me :D**

**I'd also like to point out that theres a poll on my profile, I'd really love it if you took a few moments of your time to look or even do the poll please - thanks :)**

**Also please read the note at the bottom it's a little imporant, well part of it is anyway.**

**Disclaimer : I think I've already made very clear the fact that I only wrote this story, and the fact that I don't own the characters or Yu-Gi-Oh, or anything else for that matter.**

**Now on with the story :D**

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><p>Joey was in a little bit of a bind... And not the type that he could just slip out of – in fact, it was impossible to get out of, and he felt like a trapped rat as the hands on his shoulders pushed him forward.<p>

He felt all four pairs of eyes on his back, keeping him in check.

Still, he couldn't shake the feeling of another pair of eyes on him... He knew who those eyes belonged to – they held the love that only a brother could hold, a similar emotion that he had once had.

But he was glad that all attention was on him; it meant that the fifth pair of eyes went unnoticed, just how he hoped they would stay.

He knew it was game over for him when the water in front of him almost looked inviting.

Another nudge forward made sure that his feet were dipped in the cool water.

His steps were slouched and stumbled, but he made sure that only his feet were in the water, because even if it was game over, he would still be stubborn – more than ever as he felt the magic enter him, a feeling that could only be described as a light tingle.

That tingle was all it took for him to call forth what little will power he had left to try and block the magic from getting to what it was looking for.

Another push forward made sure that he was waist deep in the water.

Why did he have to stumble so far?

What little block he had placed was soon demolished, bringing pain to every fiber of his being as he struggled to stand on his weak knees.

All eyes watched as he shook from the pain; only a fool would try and stop the most powerful source of magic known, so powerful that it took a physical form – water.

Ragged pants came from the blonde's lips as the magic managed to clear the spells from his system; every other time he had been here, he had let it do as it pleased, but now he was being punished – almost scolded – like a child for not doing as he was told.

Finally, what the people were looking – or rather, hoping – for came forth; two large, beaten and bruised but still beautiful wings came forth.

A cool hand pressed against the base of his wings where his mark sat, making him shudder; it was officially game over for him... He'd been found.

That small dragon's head was so small, yet so meaningful...

Letting a sigh fall from his lips, he looked upwards; there was no stopping anything now, because as much as he wanted his wings hidden, he had to admit there was a certain pleasure in feeling the wind blow through his ruffled feathers.

A small smile adorned his lips; it was better him being found out than Yugi, right?

Right.

All he had to do was keep telling himself that, and he might be able to make it out of the whole mess still sane, and maybe even alive if he kept begging his lucky stars.

But there was still that nagging feeling inside of him – that nothing was ever good for too long... Something he knew too well.

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><p>Yugi's hands scraped against the bark of the tree as he clung to it, just out of sight of the people at the lake.<p>

How could this happen?

...As long as Joey was alive, it didn't really matter to him, but he didn't expect for Joey to be found out so soon... At least Joey's other secrets were safe, right?

...Somehow, he was doubting it more and more, and it was just so terrible in so many ways, Yugi couldn't stop a few tears from falling.

No... He had to be strong – for Joey... For Joey, Ryou and Marik.

He had to be strong.

He repeated it in his head like a mantra for a while before taking one last glance at his trapped friend, then turning and walking away into the forest heading to the palace, the light wind blowing away his remaining tears into the air.

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><p>To say that Yami was surprised was an understatement.<p>

The fact that his cousin's mate was found... As a slave... In his palace... Hiding his wings...

It was more than enough to get him angry and confused.

How in the name of Ra did this happen?

A slave that was in _his_ palace, in _his_ Kingdom, was hiding in _plain_ sight, and just happened to be _his_ cousin's mate.

_How_ had he missed _that_?

Was this self hatred?

He didn't know, but either way he didn't care for it right now.

That was when a thought struck him; if his cousin's mate was a slave, then maybe... Just maybe, there were others like him, and maybe... There was the small... Tiny... Possibility that one of them was his mate.

Ugh, this was giving him a headache.

He lifted his head to stare at the darkening sky, letting a sigh fall from his lips; who knew that finding his marked one would be so difficult?

At least Seto was off the list now.

Thinking about it, the mate of his cousin could come in handy... But by the looks of it, he was too stubborn – he tried to resist the most powerful form of magic in the kingdom, for crying out loud! That alone was enough to give him doubts.

He took a deep breath and tried to think things over again, but stopped when a wonderful aroma reached his nose.

The smell was indescribable and just so desirable... He couldn't quite pin what it was, but he wanted it.

There was his possessiveness, showing through... But just by a simple smell?

He snapped out of his thoughts as he saw Seto carrying the blonde haired – now winged – boy in his arms, unconscious from resisting the magic.

His eyes traveled from the boy to Seto, and he didn't miss the slight upward twitch of his lips – he was smiling!

A small one, but still a rare, and almost never seen smile had graced his cousin's lips.

Yami was happy for him, and he was certain that his cousin was happy, too, when the bundle in his arms snuggled closer to the only source of warmth and heat that was there.

Following his cousin and friends as they walked out of the clearing, Yami couldn't help but let his mind wander to that delightful smell.

He licked his lips just thinking of it...

He would have it, that much was sure.

Now back to researching the Mutou family; he had a strong gut feeling that they were connected, and he was more than willing to follow that gut feeling.

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><p><strong>AN: It was a little short, but I really haven't been in the writing mood recently, I've found it difficult to type, I'll try to to do a longer chapter next time, but no promises .**

**I think I put in a little bit of indirect puzzleshipping in there, I hope you pick up on that because this is labled a YamiYugixYugi fanfic and not a SetoxJoey fanfic that it kind of has been focusing on for the last few chapters, but it's all in the plot so no worries xD.**

**I have also been thinking about changing the name of this fanfic since 'Wings of Fate' is a little bit... wishy washy... is a way to put it, I can't stop laughing every time I read it because It's so weird and dramatic sounding, so I may be changing it. But of course that'll happen a little bit later on, I'll probably put a poll up when I've come up with some ideas (not this current poll that is up, I'll tell you when the name ones up), but I'd rather have our opinion on whether to change it or not.**

**Sorry again for being late .**

**Thanks for reading and please review :D**


	8. Same old Questions

**A/N 29/04/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by Debbie the Fabulous after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her :)**

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><p><strong>AN: I'm making a habit of slow/late updates aren't I? Although I'm better than some, I try to update every week or so, but sometimes life gets busy and I die because my change in sleep patterns . I'm sorry this is late but I've been dead/bored/tired/kind of ill and an idea came to me about a fic that I might just have to write, soon but not yet it's kind of stuck in my head.**

**From what people have told me I shouldn't change the name so I'll keep it as this, no matter how sappy it sounds to me.**

**Thanks again for anyone who read, alerted, favourited or reviewed this story, your great :D**

**Disclaimer : Do I really have to do this every chapter? I've already made it pretty clear that I don't own anything other than the wording of this story and it's used for entertainment purposes only and I in no way earn profit from this.**

**While I'm at this - I'm eating BBQ flavoured noodles xD**

**Any way, on with the story :D**

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><p>If Ryou were a cruel person, he'd be on the ground, laughing his heart out; tied to a chair with a thick rope strong enough to hold him (but not hurt him) was Joey.<p>

Why Joey was tied to a chair with rope... Well... It was a long story that not even Ryou knew all about, no matter how much he tried to fit what few pieces he had together as he cleaned the floor in the corner of the room.

Either way, he scrubbed at the floor, watching silently from the corner of his eyes as his blonde friend was surrounded by four of the most powerful figures in this Kingdom, each of them staring at him with a different expressions which could only be summed up as annoyed and confused; for the past few days, Joey had been rebelling against those who were just trying to help him – to the point of recasting a spell on himself to hide his wings and trying to sneak out of the palace.

...Sadly for the little pup, he wasn't very smart with his escape, and was caught seconds before making it through the front gate.

Ryou was not mean, but he was seriously thinking that Joey was the most foolish person he'd ever met – who tries to escape a palace through one of the most guarded places there; the front gate?

But despite his thoughts, Ryou couldn't help but look upon his friend with some sympathy and a little guilt – after all, he, too, was a marked mate of one of those powerful men...

A marked mate that Joey was trying to protect.

Ryou almost winced when he saw them questioning Joey again.

How he hadn't gone insane was probably sheer will power, but even Joey didn't have a lot of that left.

The questions they asked were always the same...

"Why were you, the marked mate of High Priest Seto, pretending to be a slave?"

And the answers received were all similar, from Joey looking away and saying nothing to letting out a small snort and ignoring the question after.

...Although, there was one time when the answer had been different; yesterday, when Joey looked broken – not even having the strength to ignore them, he mumbled a simple, "I've always been a slave..."

Five simple-but-dead-sounding words that had somehow shut the four men up for the rest of the day... Other than the high priest, who suddenly started treating him with extra care – an act beyond comprehension to everyone else, especially a slave like Joey.

But the interrogations continued today, the only difference being that they were trying to be softer.

"Trying" being the key word.

Joey seemed a little better than yesterday, but Ryou highly doubted that it changed a lot; the blonde was pretty good at pretending to be happy when he wasn't, and just being, overall, optimistic in a situation of life or death.

Ryou let a quiet sigh pass through his laps as he refocused on scrubbing the floor clean.

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><p>Yami decided long ago that the interrogation was getting them nowhere, but he kept trying just for the hope.<p>

Why was it that nothing ever got anywhere for him?

Had he been a bad person in his past life?

Whatever it was, he might as well have been a murderer for the things he was going through at the moment; not only had he been up to his knees in information about a certain family and found nothing, but he had found that his cousin's marked mate turned out to be a slave, and because it seemed so unreal, they had to question him about it, but he was giving them nothing.

Even now, as he stood before the once-slave, he couldn't help but feel that he was getting nowhere, but he wasn't about to give up, though he got roughly the same answer every time – excluding yesterday's answer.

That had his skin crawling; the thought that his marked mate could be doing the same as this boy here, but going through worse...

No... He couldn't even think about such a thing.

It was about time that he started a new approach... Maybe if he went at it from a different angle, he would get somewhere.

He inhaled deeply, as if preparing for what would surely take a while, and began, "Alright... How about you tell us your name... _Full_ name, please," a tired smile reaching his lips as he saw that the boy was just as tired of this as him.

"Joey... Just Joey."

Why was his voice breaking more and more over the course of the day?

No... He was still acting happy; he was just cautious of them.

"No family name?"*****

"No."

He watched the boy's eyes change for a moment – a small flicker of emotion... Was it pain? Or maybe hatred... ? It might've been both, but Yami couldn't say for sure.

"Okay... Well, Joey... Do you happen to know any people similar to you?"

By the look on his face, Yami could tell that the blonde understood.

"..."

He saw his cousin watch the boy like a hawk as he flicked his eyes in different directions; to the floor, the ceiling, then all the way to the door – probably looking for a way escape, Yami concluded.

"...No," Joey finally answered, voice level and calm – if you didn't consider the panic that came over him before.

"Alright, Seto... You can take him for now; that's all we need for today," Yami called over to his cousin before gesturing for the other two to follow him, barely noticing the nod that his cousin gave in return.

The long walk to what he could only describe as his study was a silent one that they were not bothered by.

With grace that could only be acquired at birth, he walked into his study and plopped down into his chair while the other two pulled up chairs in front of him.

He threw his head back and stared upwards before a familiar, warming scent that he still couldn't quite work out came to his nose.

His eyes flicked over to the source of the scent, where he noticed a small servant boy picking up the last few pieces of paper that had been carelessly scattered around the room into a pile by the others.

After a few moments, he recognized the boy.

"That's all Yugi, thank you," he spoke, watching the boy jump then nod before giving a low bow and legging it out of the room, a gesture that both confused and intrigued him.

"Probably didn't notice me," he mused to himself.

Turning his attention to the two in front of him, he let out a sigh.

"So what do you think?" He asked; he was completely open about taking advice concerning the blonde.

"He was clearly lying," Bakura put forth with little effort, gaining a rather neck-breaking nod in agreement from Marik.

"That means that there's probably others somewhere in the palace," Marik observed, a look of pride and glee on his face.

Yami just nodded along, thinking it through; he saw the grins on their faces, but he really didn't feel that it would be right to do what he knew they were planning.

"You know, we could always just – " Bakura started.

"No... Not just yet, anyways; we don't want to draw too much attention. What if they try to run for it? Clearly, Seto's mate didn't seem too happy about getting caught."

A long sigh filled the room; who knew that finding the one that you would spend the rest of your life with – or rather, the one you _preferred_ to spend the rest of you life with – would be so difficult?

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><p><strong>AN: I think that was a little bit short, but it got through what it was meant to XD.**

*** - I wrote 'family name' because I wasn't sure what to call it, I call it a sirname but I'm english and I hear no one else use the term on anything I've ever been on online, and I'm not really sure what country this story is set in - woah, aren't I great writer I don't even know where the hell this place is XD.**

**Any way, thanks for reading, I'll try to update soon and please review :D**


	9. Bottled blood

**A/N 29/04/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by **_Debbie the Fabulous_** after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her :)**

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><p><strong>AN: And here we go the next chapter, hopefully this makes up for the fact that last chapter was rather a filler and was short, I hop that this one is longer, because I spent a little more time on it than usual and I was kind of building on this idea as I was writing it, so I hope it turns out well.**

**Also I would just like to point out the other story I've just started writing called 'Toxic' I started writing it because my head was clogged up with an idea, and that idea was for that story and was blocking ideas for this story so I had to write it to try and get on with thoughts for this one. Feel free to read it - If you want - But either way Now I'm juggling two stories and life, but I'll still try to keep up the updates in about a week for each give or take a few days.**

**Anyway, Thanks to anyone who; Alerted, Favourited, Read or Reviewed - Your Awesome and I love you :D**

**Warning : This chapter may be a little disturbing for some, manily because it includes Bakura and well... He's a bit bad in the head, so sorry if I give you bad dreams.**

**Also this chapter is rather lacking of Yami and Yugi, but we can't always be staring at their pretty little faces, and don't worry remember my puzzleshipping is going to happen with a big bang XD.**

**Anyway, on with the story :D**

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><p>He was used to scrubbing the floor by now because of how often he was given the job, but this, by far, was the worst place to scrub.<p>

Ryou was on all fours with a ragged cloth, rubbing the floor until he felt his knuckles would bleed from the constant motion, but no matter how many times he cleaned a spot, it would later get dirty again.

"Welcome to the kitchen," the slaves would mumble amongst themselves.

The newbies were always put in the kitchen first – Ryou assumed it was a sort of trial and error; if you couldn't survive the kitchen, you were better off dead than alive.

Even now, as Ryou was crouched low to the ground, white hair clinging to and around his face, he could still smell the revolting stench of the freshly killed animals and rotten vegetables that hung around and above him; he had been placed in the meat section this time, the worst place of all – all blood that hadn't been drained before the meet was hung slid down the bodies and onto the floors and counters.

But while the kitchen was certainly a terrifying place, it still held nothing against the torture chambers and prisons which were... Actually... Similarly styled to the kitchen...

The boy flinched as a drop of blood landed directly on his cheek after some how making it's way through the matted hair that clung to his face, and his nose crinkled in displeasure as another newbie chucked up what left was in his stomach... That was the sixth today, and he had only been here a few hours.

No matter how much he ignored it, the smell had been getting to him, and he only felt worse when a rotten turnip accidentally kicked away while one slave was trying to scrub a wall rolled passed; there were only four slaves cleaning the room despite its size – it was roughly larger than the large kitchen near the room, but it made sense; demons like meat.

Sometimes Ryou wondered why they even had to clean the floor if it would just bet bloody again even though he already knew; they had to clean so people passing through wouldn't slip and get hurt or die in a freak accident.

Maybe too much thought had been put into the idea, but Ryou knew how difficult it was to collect meat when the floor hadn't been briefly cleaned; it had to be one of the most painful falls that Ryou had experienced yet, but he just got back up and stopped whining – that's how you survived.

Ryou let out a small, quiet whimper as another large splat of blood landed on him from above, successfully landing on his neck and sliding down his back, soaking into his "clothes" and giving him a great deal of discomfort no matter how he moved.

Oh, how he hated the kitchen.

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><p>Bakura muttered to himself under his breath as he sat opposite Seto.<p>

It surprised him that the high priest had arrived at his chambers, entered daringly, and said that he had something to discuss with him.

Bakura had then promptly gotten himself a bottle of blood and Seto one of wine – but not before offering some blood to Seto, who had refused, to which Bakura replied with a series of insults along the lines of Seto being a weak-blooded demon that Seto had wisely ignored.

Now he sat with Seto, taking in mouthfuls of blood at a time as Seto explained things that Bakura didn't bother listening to; he had already heard from Marik about how Seto had arrived at his door and discussed the same things with him.

"So what do you think?" Seto asked, taking a sip of his wine.

"It could work," Bakura grumbled, taking another gulp of the blood before reaching for the bottle and refilling.

He saw Seto's brow crinkle slightly, but Seto did nothing to stop him.

"We decided that it would be used as a last resort if time starts running out," Seto explained, "because we all have different time limits. I now have my mate, even though my time ran out quite a while ago... As you know, though, it's best not to go over, considering the position that you three are in."

The mention of the sensitive subject made the white-haired demon grumble more.

Wasn't it was just like Seto to give you a verbal slap in the face to remind you of how much your life sucked.

"Okay... But we still don't have a plan for before we get to the panic zone," Bakura pushed, downing another glass to refill.

"We're working on that, but for the time being, we'll need to keep our eyes open to see if we find anything," Seto replied, thinking things over and standing up. "But anyway... I must get going; the pup's been trying to escape again," he said with a small smile as he left the room, wine glass in his place.

Bakura muttered to himself about how lucky Seto was for not having to go through what he, Marik, and Yami were going through.

It was worse for Yami, but he still was more worried about himself at the moment; there was no way he would let a couple of old bones rule his life – he'd worry about Yami and Marik after he was in the clear, then drag them out... If he felt generous and Marik didn't annoy him...

He reached over to pour some more "Red Heaven" into his waiting glass and growled when he noticed nothing came out; that was the last bottle he had in his room.

Well he'd just have to have a servant bring some up to him... What a wonderful idea...

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><p>At first, Ryou was thankful when he'd been taken from the kitchen to do another job, but that was before he found out what job he was to do and began shaking in fear.<p>

He'd been asked to do something most girls would die to do, but all servants would rather die than do; deliver a bottle of blood to Lord Bakura.

Lord Bakura wasn't exactly the safest company; he was commonly found hanging around the dungeons, whether he was asked to be there or not, and no one dared to asked for fear of his handiness with a whip and all the other torture tools laying carelessly about and within his reach.

Even his room was terrifying; it smelled of blood all the time, making many wonder if anything living that wasn't him ever left it, and it was so dark, you could barely see a foot in front of your face – which was horrible if you were going to deliver some thing; if you had the unfortunate luck to trip and break your delivery, you end up like the mess.

Although it wasn't the first time Ryou had gone to Lord Bakura's room, he was always scared of it, even in passing – which was why his delicate hands gripped the bottle for dear life for a few moments before he was able to even knock on the door..

He stood there for a few moments without a response, making him shake in fear and white as his hair – when it was clean – before he finally he heard a gruff admittance to enter.

Ryou quietly pushed the door open and stepped inside the dimly lit room, eyes frantically looking around for its owner and finding him on a chair not too far.

Ryou swallowed his nervousness and bowed, stammering, "L-Lord Ba-Bakura... I h-have the b-blood you asked for," knowing that the man before him could kill him with the flick or a wrist – without ever finding out who he was.

"Bring it here," he ordered with a smirk, watching the small servant stumble over and place the blood on the tray next to him before trying to scurry off, but Bakura would have none of that – he caught the boy's chin between his nimble fingers and made eye contact.

The small servant's eyes widened in fear and shock; this wasn't what he had been expecting.

Millions of questions raced through his head – did he know? If he did, what would he do?

So many questions... He was overwhelmed to a point of exhaustion before his chin was tilted up, breaking the fearful spell his anxiety had on him.

"I've seen you before, haven't I?" Lord Bakura wondered aloud, red eyes inspecting the whimpering boy he had captured. "Ah, yes... You're the little rabbit, aren't you?" He continued, turning Ryou's head slightly up and away from him. "My, my... What a pretty little neck you have there, rabbit."

The sadistic grin that fell upon Bakura's face widened when he saw the fear in the servant's eyes and body.

Bakura reached out to the tray and picked up a sharp object that had, for some reason, been laying there with the glasses, his smirk stretching even wider as he lifted the knife to the poor boy's neck and pressed the flat of the blade against it.

Red eyes watched as tears formed in the servant's eyes as he tried to speak, succeeding only in making small whimpers.

"So beautiful..." The lord whispered to himself. "What is your name, Little Rabbit?" He asked, louder.

Ryou knew better than to keep the demon waiting, so he tried (and failed) multiple times to respond before finally managing a simple, "R-Ry-Ryou."

Bakura turned the blade slightly, almost nicking the skin as he said with a smirk, "Ryou... I think I prefer 'Rabbit'."

In the short frame of time that Bakura was thinking, Ryou had quickly pulled away, saying, "I m-ust get to m-my other jobs!" before legging it out as fast as he could.

Bakura allowed himself a chuckle as the echo of the door being slammed shut traveled around the large room, smirking and muttering to himself, "Such a shame... But I got what I wanted," as he picked up the bottle brought to him, placing the knife back on the tray and taking a swig of the blood-wine.

It was truly one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen; a small, delicate slave with tears almost brimming over as his eyes widened in fear.

He wanted to see the other expressions from the little slave... But he brushed it off and went back to drinking his blood.

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><p>On the other side of the door, Ryou was just shaking in fear as he caught his breath; he couldn't <em>believe<em> what had just happened... Mostly because he never expected to have such foul luck during an encounter with Lord Bakura.

But worst of all, he'd almost been cut; marked mates can recognize each other by the smell of their blood – though it's usually an overprotective feeling and need to comfort. If Bakura had got a whiff of his blood., he would have lost what little he had.

Deciding that staying where he was wasn't the best idea, Ryou righted himself before sprinting to the slave chambers, where he found Malik on his cot giving him a confused look.

Ryou dived head-first into Malik's chest and cried while Malik rubbed his back soothingly; they were like brothers, and it was all they could do.

Malik knew he wouldn't be alone on his cot, but he didn't mind; Ryou was the little brother that needed protection.

Malik's eyes traveled to the cot that held a curled up Yugi, his other "little brother".

Even if their other brother Joey wasn't able to be with them, they were fine; they could stay strong together.

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><p><strong>AN: I hope this makes up for the last lame chapter, I'm not ill anymore so I'm back up in shape and I hope this works out better. It should of been longer too, I hope you liked it :D**

**Again sorry if Bakura gives you nightmares, it was kind of weird how that scene just flowed out of me, worrying but productive for this story so, that's that xD.**

**Anyway, Thank you for reading and please review :)**


	10. Simple as a slave

**A/N 29/04/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by Debbie the Fabulous after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her :)**

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><p><strong>AN: Finally I got round to writing this, I had a majour block in my head, but I managed to work around it, I had an idea but well it's just how to stage it really. I've been lacking sleep again, and my sisters visiting so I don't have all the time in the world, and besides I like spending time with my older sister. Reading other fanfics too takes up most the time, I've been planning to write this for about three days, but I was reading other people's work XD. Also writing and thinking about Toxic at time, I'm going to write the next chapter of that soon, probably tomorrow but I have to put it through my beta for that.**

**Anyway, Thanks anyone who; Favourited, Alerted, read or reviewed, I love you :D**

**This chapter is kind of a build up, but I think it's pretty good and not really a filler so it should be ok, Yami appears in this chapter, a short amount of time but he's there :D**

**Now, on with the story :)**

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><p>Ryou woke of his own accord, something he hadn't done in quite sometime between all the nightmares and yelling, fat, rich people, and was met with a shoulder covered by a large, damp, ripped fabric. He suspected it to Malik at first, but after looking up, he saw the small, innocent face of his brother-like friend, Yugi.<p>

He examined his sleeping friend's face and couldn't help but smile – even with his puffy red eyes from crying the night before, Yugi looked truly at peace when he slept.

Sleep was a small getaway for them – a place where dreams came true, but vanished just as quickly when you woke because dreams _don't_ come true, and if you couldn't understand that, then you were better off dead.

The white-haired boy carefully pushed himself off the cot so as not to wake Yugi, glancing around the room and finding that Malik's cot was empty – probably sending a message because of his high stamina, Ryou reasoned.

He stretched like a cat before fixing the large, dirty "shirt" on his body; a large array of stains covered the material – from food, to dirt, and, Ryou grimaced, blood. He didn't even know if it was his or an animal's – it could have been another slave's, but he knew he didn't want to know.

Ryou knew he'd be cleaning because his body – as well as Yugi and sometimes even Malik because he looked so scrawny – was too weak to handle the manual labor assigned to most slaves.

The thought of Joey got him down, though; he really missed Joey. Joey was the older brother that always protected him – even if it wasn't on purpose. Joey and Malik always fought on the front lines for him and Yugi, and it hurt him deep down to know that whenever a whip that came to their backs, it was partially his fault... And now it was only Malik, so soon they would all be fresh picking no matter how much of a fight they put up.

Ryou quietly left the room and meekly shut the door before going to get his "orders" – a list of rooms that had to be spotless by a certain times or he would be put through a living Hell, and then have to clean that up too. Oh, the joys of being a slave.

It wasn't long before he reached the first room, and Ryou was surprised to find it actually belonged to the high priest. The high priest, Ryou had been told, was out, so the room needed to be cleaned, though the man who told him didn't seem all that pleased with having a dirty little slave go into the room and possibly making it more dirty rather than clean, but Ryou wouldn't do something crazy, and was far too weak to steal anything from there.

Ryou didn't bother knocking; he knew he wouldn't get an answer even if he did. He pushed the door open and quietly shut it behind him, turned around, and took in the full beauty of the room. Different pieces of gold were arranged in an organized manner, glinting and glittering every so often with what little light made it through the large blue curtains draped over windows. A large majority of the furniture was some shade of blue, actually, balanced well with the soft white of the walls.

His eyes trailed to the bed. A thin, white curtain surrounded it, but you could still see the thick oak legs and base... But even though the curtain surrounded the bed, Ryou could see the outline of a figure on the bed, clearly showing through.

_I thought he was out?_ He thought quietly to himself, eyes widening a fraction; he did not know that High Priest was still here, and he had so disrespectfully walked in without knocking and gawked at the room. At this point, Ryou was having a mental break down.

What brought him out of his panic attack was the soft sound of a familiar sigh coming from the lump on the bed; he knew the voice, but it couldn't be, could it?

He cautiously made his was to the bed, taking a deep breath and swallowing his fear as the beat of his heart rang through his ears. He stopped at the side of the bed when he saw the lump shift slightly in his direction, and Ryou reached out and grabbed the fabric, took another deep breath, and pulled it back to show a very familiar blonde, who looked up at him, eyes brightening.

"Ryou!" The blonde grinned, pulling him into a tight hug, not even giving the pale boy a chance to do anything.

"J-Joey?" He questioned more to himself than to the blonde.

"Yep! It's me!" Joey's grin stretched from ear to ear as he pulled back from the hug to look Ryou over carefully.

Now that he could take in all of Joey, Ryou noticed how different he looked; his blonde hair, though still shaggy and hanging over his eyes, was no clean and silky, instead of dirty and bloody. His clothing had blue at the ends, been well-made, clearly taken a lot of time to prepare, and actually fit him – even if they were a little baggy... His clothes were completely unlike the blood-and-dirt-stained rags that Ryou wore. Ryou's eyes finally stopped on Joey's back; there sat two large wings, folded down a bit on his back, but could still be seen. They were pure white – almost glowing. Some feathers were still missing, but the wings were healing well and had never looked better.

Joey looked amazing and had made a great "recovery", considering the fact that the last time Ryou had seen him, he had one foot in his grave. Ryou was amazed that Joey had his wings out; it wasn't something that Joey liked doing, even if it felt good.

As if he'd read his mind, Joey started grumbling something under his breath, adjusting his wings again. "Stupi' Kaiba... Makes me have 'em out," Ryou made out amongst the other grumbles. "Bastard."

Ryou couldn't help but giggle at that; even after being caught and captured, Joey still had the cheek to call such a high man such a low name.

"Ah," The smaller boy sighed, remembering why he was there. He moved away from the bed, a cloth in one hand and a bucket in the other, and said, "I have got to get cleaning," his accent making him sound more panicked than he would have liked.

"I can help ya if ya wan'," he offered. It sounded like a question, but Joey wasn't about to take "no" for an answer.

"No, you ca-" Ryou tried to protest.

"Sure, I ca'." He hopped off the bed before walking over to Ryou and kneeling down to where he was now "stationed".

"What about Kaiba?" The smaller asked meekly.

"Who cares abou' Kaiba? 'E can go to 'ell, fo' all I care," Joey replied, earning a small giggle before they started cleaning the floor.

The High Priest wouldn't be back for a while at least, so they could just enjoy the peace; this would be one of the only times they could be together, so they were going to make the most of it - even if they weren't the closest pair in their group, they were still friends – or brothers, in their minds.

Joey caught a glimpse of a cut peeking out from under Ryou's over-sized shirt and advised, "You should go to da healing waters an' have dat healed."

Ryou looked down at the cut and sighed; he never really felt the need to go to the healing waters, but he supposed that it would be fine to go now – the cut was really starting to hurt.

"You're right.. I'll go a little bit later; I need to finish here first," He replied with a small smile, before going back to scrubbing the floor spotless, not bothering with the small scratches gathering on his knuckles from brushing too hardly against the floor.

Joey just smiled back and kept on cleaning with him, neither caring about the scratches that their hands were gathering; they were used to those. They had to be – no matter how you looked at, it they were slaves, even if one wasn't allowed to be one in public anymore, and old habits die hard.

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><p>Seto sat, lounging in his chair and reading a book, occasionally moving a chess piece on the board next to him, his cousin deep in thought opposite him. And though Yami wasn't paying attention, he was still winning at the chess game.<p>

On the other side of the room, Marik and Bakura were brawling, certainly not holding back as they ran at each other with unbelievable speed, using their magic, fists, feet... Anything they could, really. At one point, Marik even slammed his head in to Bakura's stomach.

It wasn't until quite a while later that the two stopped going at each others throats and slouched down into chairs beside Yami and Seto, trying to catch their breath; they'd been at it for hours – an outstanding ten whole chess games between between Seto and Yami.

"You two should go to the healing waters later; you seem beat." Yami mumbled distractedly, before moving another piece on the board.

"We're going to," Mari assured, still panting, "but maybe you should come, too, ey, kingy? It might clear your head." Marik suggested, grinning as he leaned back into his chair. No matter what position he was in, he couldn't help but tease people with nick-names.

"For once, he's right, cousin. You do seem a bit off," Seto said, moving another piece before letting a small smirk come to his face. "Check mate – my first win today," he mumbled a little bitterly. Though it was bitter, he had finally won a game against his cousin – something that almost never happened.

"Maybe you're right," Yami agreed, running a hand through his hair as he glared at the chess board in front of him; he really _was_ having an off day.

"Why don't we just all go later?" Bakura suggested half-heartedly; he really didn't care about anything at this point, he just wanted to get his strength back.

They all nodded as The King and his cousin, both off in their own worlds, began another game. No matter how focused the seemed, sometimes it was hard to be of such a high position.

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><p><em><strong>DN: I'm sorry about the centered text the first few chapters! It's the only way I can stand editing something (even my own school papers O.o), so I'm sorry if my forgetfulness made your eyes hurt or anything. The only reason this note is here in this chapter and not in chapter 6 is because at this point in time, I've already edited chapters 6-9, but Sez has been so busy (because writers and betas have lives, too!), that Sez hasn't been able to put them up. So, I hope you've enjoyed the journey thus far, and I hope you'll continue. :)**_

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><p><strong>AN-Extra-: In the Debbie's note just above it says that she centered the first few chapters, although I think I may of changed them so they were at the side - it makes it easier for me to read - but I may of not, It's taken forever for me to upload these edited chapters that I forget . Sorry.**

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><p><strong>AN: And there it was, I hoped you enjoyed it, I'm really trying to work out Ryou's character, he's basically shy and meek but has a strongish view on things aswell, after all he's not completely weak.**

**I don't know if this was too short, I hope not, either way I'm sorry for any Typos, I did a spell check before I posted so it should be fine for that but we all know what goes through your brain does not always come out your fingers.**

**I hoped you liked it, please review and thank you for reading :)**


	11. Pouring Rain

****A/N 29/04/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by******** after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her :)****

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><p><strong>AN: A little bit later than originally planned, but it took a while to think through what was going to happen and I was at a cross road with Toxic so that took up most of my thought then there was the fact that I just couldn't seem to write anything for a while, and I was dead tired.**

**But oh well, I managed it :D**

**Any way, thank you to any one who; read, alerted, favourited or reviewed - Your awesome :D XD**

**I shall say this again, for what should be the 11th time since I started writing this story, I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh or any of the characters in the anime or manga, this is simply for enjoyment and I'm not running a shady business and earning money off another persons work. Thank you for bothering to read this.**

**Anyway, I think it's time to get on with the chapter, don't you :)**

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><p>Ryou tipped his head back in pure bliss as the water ran down his body, not caring that it was raining; it was still technically bathing, and it made the lake water a little warmer and more bearable to be in.<p>

He ran his fingers through the his hair, getting rid of the knots and making a grubby trail of dirt and blood trail down his back and into the lake before disappearing in to the pure water. Ryou would have questioned the fact that the water was never dirty if it he weren't so engrossed in his bath; it was considered an honour to any servant to just be able to sneak away for a few moments and claw the dirt off your body while healing a few wounds in the process.

And honoured he was, being waist deep in such wonderfully warm water, wings stretched out to the high heavens, wet hair clinging to his face and shoulders for dear life in the pleasant silence that had fallen over the clearing.

He poured some more water onto his back and tried to suppress a shiver as it ran down the small, ring-like birth mark with its five pendant-shaped arrows sticking out of it; his birth mark.

His fingers continued to slide along his chest and sides, scrubbing off more dirt and hopefully healing a few of the bruises under it.

A heavy, satisfied sigh fell from his lips as his wings shook themselves free of some of the water weighing them down.

At times like these, he forgot about the world and about what was on his shoulders if he even dared to make a wrong move – that he forgot there were people around him in a similar situation who would probably get hurt for him... And that he was to be forever alone.

He'd have to keep quiet forever for the sake of the others, be afraid for the sake of his friends and himself, and have to be weak for the sake of his health.

His hands ran down his prominent ribcage that had, somehow, managed to collect some small amount of fat over his time. That in particular didn't matter, though; he was still standing, and that itself was a sign of health to him.

His physical wounds were nowhere near as bad as those of his friends, but their emotional wounds weren't as bad as his, carved into his mind like Malik's.

Yes. This as one of the few times he'd be able to forget about the fear that ran through his veins every night, making him have to sleep with his friends just so he could have some energy.

Pale skin glowed in contrast to the dirt that stilling running down his sides. His head was tilted slightly up into the light, the bags under his eyes showing a bit as dirt streamed down his face, almost like black tears from the ivory gleam.

He froze when he heard something; sounds coming from the dense trees behind him – the rustling of leaves. It wasn't too far away, and he guessed he had maybe three minutes before he was in real trouble.

His instincts kicked in, and he quickly waded through the water and to the side of the lake, pulling on the small black shorts that only just fit him. He looked frantically over his shoulder for the coming voices; they were close. Too close.

He made a grab for the over-sized t-shirt on the edge and began a brisk pace through the muddy ground towards the trees, trying to slip on his shirt with much difficulty.

He flicked his gaze back over to the trees behind him, and he froze, dropping and dropped the t-shirt onto his still-open wings; he could have managed if it was anyone but them, but it was clearly them, and Ryou came to a conclusion in his head: he was screwed.

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><p>From a distance, any passerby would see Bakura staring blankly at the clearing with curious eyes, but anyone there next to him knew he was staring at something else entirely, because they were, too; a meek figure was the center of the small group's attention.<p>

One with white, flowing hair much like his own (but in this case, darker and wet), wearing a small of shorts, though they looked more like boxers – the underwear. What really held attention, though, was not that he was struggling to put his clearly-too-big shirt on; no, it was the fact that he had a pair of large, white, fluffy wings on his back.

The wings were a little beaten but still eye-catching, but what had initially caught and held his attention for so long was the small mark on the boy's back; a ring with five pendant-shaped arrows.

A match to him.

The young boy was less than a few feet from them, clearly terrified from the frantic look in his eyes, and was frozen like a deer in the head lights.

It wasn't long before the boy had finally managed to get his shirt on and tried to make a run for it, but Bakura would have none of that; from what he'd seen, the boy was his, and shouldn't be running from him.

Within seconds, the older of the two had pounced down on the boy, pinning him firmly to the ground with shocking speed and grace for such harsh movements.

Bakura slipped the boy's shirt up with difficulty over the obvious wings that he obviously had and obviously tried to hide to get a better look at his back, making sure to take in every detail. He let his hand rest gently hand over the small mark at the base of the wings. All he knew for sure was that that boy was his mate.

It wasn't until after his moment of ignoring the struggles from under him as he observed the boy that he noticed that the boy's attire was that of a servant – a slave, actually, and his eyes flicked over to Yami as he raised a brow at him while gesturing to the clothes, proving his point.

Yami growled in return and looked at his cousin, who nodded and exchanged a glance with Marik, who also nodded – that was two in row, and was no longer seen as a fluke.

Bakura nodded before he suddenly and without warning flipped the boy over onto his back to get a good look at him, and what he saw made his eyes widen a fraction. It seemed that the little rabbit had been hiding something.

"I don't like being lied to, Little Rabbit," Bakura hissed, carefully studying the boy under him as he tensed up, eyes widening in horror before quickly squeezing shut, as if in preparation for a hit. A growl escaped from Bakura's throat; that wasn't the reaction he wanted. "Then again... To call you 'Rabbit' may be a little off since you have these..." He murmured, fingers running along a few of the feathers as he felt the younger shudder beneath him. "But never mind that."

"It looks like we'll be having another word with your mate, Seto," Yami called over to him. He received a small nod in return before he turned to study the small body under Bakura; during the short sequence, Ryou had gone limp under Bakura.

"Oh, great. He fainted," Bakura groaned as he moved to pick Ryou up bridal style. How was that even possible? How could someone faint so easily?

Oh well. It mattered not to him; he just found his other half.

But it seemed that the younger did not want to be found... In fact, it seemed no one wanted to be found.

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><p>Shortly after Ryou had awoken, he found himself seated in a chair facing four of the most powerful faces in the kingdom. He felt the urge to enter the world of sleep again before he saw Joey seated beside him in a similar way, looking at Ryou with concerned eyes, completely ignoring the others in the room.<p>

Chocolate eyes met honey and tried to hold back tears as the severity of the situation hit full-force; he was out of the game now, but this outcome was worse than those of the games of their childhood, and the fear of never directly seeing Malik again settled into his system.

No matter what, though, he wouldn't cry. He wouldn't give the enemy the satisfaction of him crying, even if they weren't here to see that in the first place.

"It'll be alrigh'," Joey whispered next to him, doing little to actually soothe his mind but enough for him to offer a sad, small smile to his blonde friend.

"So we were right. You do know each other," Seto interrupted, making Joey redirect his gaze and glare at him while Ryou shrunk back into his seat, neither denying it, but neither agreeing, either.

"We suggest you make this easier on yourselves and your friends and just tell us who the others are," Marik suggested.

He received no reply as the two boys avoided everyone's gazes; they wouldn't dare give out the names of their friends – there was too much on the line.

"Look... We just want to know the names of our soul mates. Can you give them to us?" Yami pushed, and was met with a long, eerie silence.

"S-sorry, but... th-there's too m-much on the l-line," Ryou's meek voice broke through, earning everyone's attention and eyes that he ignored as he stared at the ground with a lost look.

"What do you mean, 'too much on the line'?" Bakura's gruff voice inquired.

The two boys stared at the ground, refusing to meet any eyes.

A small tear fell from Ryou's cheek, startling everyone, but to their surprise, none followed it. No more tears fell; only that one, full of sorrow and pain.

"Alright, then. I think I know how we're going to find them," Yami announced before leaving the room, not looking back; no matter how much he wanted to, he wasn't going to do anything to force the information out of them – they were too delicate for that.

Yami thought about what condition his mate might be in when they found him or her.

He could only imagine.

In the room, two servants didn't look up – they just stared at the ground as Marik left after the king.

"Come on." Bakura's voice filled Ryou's thoughts as he looked up to see a hand being offered to him. He stared at it for a moment before seeing the raised eyebrow daring him to disobey, and with that, the smaller grabbed the proffered hand and was hoisted to his feet before being dragged out of the room.

Maybe things wouldn't be as bad as he expected... Or maybe they would just be a little better than he thought.

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><p><strong>AN: I think this was a little bit longer than all the others, I know it took me a while to write about an hour and 20 minutes, give or take a few. I'm terribly sorry for any typoes, any bad grammar or spelling mistakes that I did not pick up on in spell check, because I don't know what's wrong with me but I just couldn't spell anything today, it took a lot longer than normal.**

**I noticed that I didn't referre to Yami as The King a lot in this chapter, it kind of slipped my mind a bit, but I hope it didn't do anything to affect the story - I'm whole heartedly sorry if it it.**

**I'm hoping to update reasonably soon, thanks for reading and please review :D**


	12. Don't cry

****A/N 16/04/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by****_ Debbie the Fabulous_**** after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her :)****

**A/N: Here we go, another chapter, finally got down to writing it. It took a lot of thought on what I should of done after the last chapter, considering that Ryou had just gotten caught. But I finally got round to thinking of what to write in this chapter.**

**The drama's coming up, so I hope you like it, sadly this is just a set up, the next chapter is going to probably be a build up to, and maybe the one after that. But don't worry there's so real gold waiting at the end, but it's probably best to read through and wait until then :P**

**Thanks to anyone who; read, alerted, favourited or reviewed, you rule! XD.**

**Disclaimer : Here we go again, basically I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh, nor any of the characters in Yu-Gi-Oh, I'm not using this story to earn money, and I have not since the last chapter become the owner of Yu-Gi-Oh. So basically I own nothing but maybe the plot and writing of this story.**

**Thanks for bothering to reading that :D**

**Anyway, better get on with the chapter, neh?**

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><p>Malik wrapped his arms tightly around his small form; he was cold, but he was used to that. He was used to many things in his repetitive life, like how cold air would drift through a small open window at the top of the room while he lay there, shivering with all the others.<p>

But there were some things that he knew he'd never get used to, no matter how long he had to adjust...

Like loneliness.

Ryou had been taken from him... His happy little medium that came in the form of a friend – a _brother_. Ryou had been taken...

When Joey had been plucked from their little group, Malik had been just as depressed, but he didn't know how strong he could be without the petit little Ryou by his side.

There were other problems, too – like Yugi; the boy was just as much a brother to him as Ryou was, but lately, he had been disappearing for questionable periods of time, and it seemed to Malik that the loss of Joey and Ryou had finally hit him fall blast, and the realization had finally started to sink in.

He could feel the walls of their small world start to crumble again – first by them, and now by some people meant to be their "other halves," but he didn't want to mate. Not yet – not even if everyone else mated before him.

He just needed friends to fill the small void that had been created all those years ago.

He needed his friends and the small promise lingering his mind that meant they were safe. All he had to do was keep his end of the deal, but by how things were going, the deal wouldn't much longer.

He clenched his fists and looked down as his tears began to flow before he rubbed them away with his arm; he needed to stay strong, because wimping out and crying wouldn't help anyone.

Something drifted to his ears and his eyes followed the sound to a small, curled-up ball on a cot, shaking and breathing hard: Yugi.

One of them needed to stay strong and get everything back, and seeing that the one who had, so far, smiled through it all couldn't stand their predicament, Malik decided he would lift some the burden from the boy's shoulders and heave it with him; they would share the burden and bear through it together.

Malik slowly made his way over to the shivering ball and sat down on the scratch cot, causing a sickening squeal to be emitted. His arms found their way to the small shaking form and closed around it in a comforting hug.

They needed to stay strong; there was too much on the line to start crying now.

They needed to stay strong.

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><p>Ryou, though easily he was surprised and frightened, had proved time and again that he was able to adapt to new surroundings and conditions... But maybe this wasn't one of those times.<p>

Imagine the little white-haired-boy's surprise when he woke up with two arms snaked around his chest, keeping him against a firm chest under a thick blanket keeping away the cold.

To say the least, he almost had a panic attack.

Now imagine his surprise when he noticed that his wings were out on display, and that the person behind him was none other than Lord Bakura, the man who had held a blade to his neck with amusement in his eyes just a few days before.

He went into a brief state of shock and almost had a heart attack, making the larger man behind him grumble in protest at the movement and almost wake up.

The morning could have been far better: he could have woken up, freezing in his cot, dreading the day when he would be split from his friends – _not_ wake up with tired lord glaring at him, preventing him from leaving with a cage of arms; that was enough to make his life flash before his eyes.

What surprised Ryou the most about it all, though, was that what he expected to happen didn't happen; he expected that the lord, when he saw the little slave in his arms, would shove him to the ground and yell at him for sneaking into his bed and chambers – which wasn't true. Ryou couldn't even remember how he got there, and he definitely didn't remember going to sleep.

No, that didn't happen. In fact, quite the opposite happened; Lord Bakura grumbled some more and almost painfully tightening his grip on the little slave, pulling him closer before ducking his head down to the base of his wings and running his sharp teeth the bone closest to the pale skin, then proceeding to lick the place where his teeth had been.

He didn't dare say it, but it felt kind of good.

The situation itself wasn't particularly comforting – he had a demon's teeth at the base of his wings, possibly ready to tear them off, but it somehow felt safe... Which was strange, considering how dangerous such an act was – one wrong move and he'd have one wing for the rest of his life.

The thought alone scared Ryou, but he soon realized he wasn't shaking in fear. In fact, a small smile of content worked its way onto his lips, and a blush of embarrassment onto his cheeks; what on ea –

Now he remembered. He had been caught; Bakura had discovered that the frail boy was his mate, and was now acting upon that. Even if it wasn't a normal thing to do, it described why Ryou wasn't peeing himself in fear, even though the man behind him could easily rip his wings off from the base – if he wanted to, anyway.

Later, Bakura had told Ryou the he would be allowed to see Joey if they agreed to not try to run, and Ryou figured that doing as he was told to see his friend was the least he could do, so he agreed.

Although things did seem to be looking up for them, he could still feel that small voice in the back of his head, warning him of what was to come.

That voice that had been screaming the very second that he had been caught, crying in despair, knowing that all hope was gone.

It made Ryou feel like he was breaking apart, and he didn't know how much he could take before he finally crumbled like the world around him. For now, though, he would try and stay in the world – he would be stronger, and not cry in every waking moment of despair.

He'd be strong for those who needed him because maybe there was still a small chance.

A small chance...

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><p>"Were going to go through with <em>that<em> plan," announced a strong voice from the wooden desk.

"Already taking action, my king?" Marik inquired.

"Of course, Marik," Yami confirmed. "It's clear what must be done... We must find our mates. I'm sick and tired of having those old hags breathing down my neck all the time," Yami explained, throwing himself back into his chair as he scanned over the others in the room: Seto was sitting in a chair near the wall, reading a leather-bound book; Bakura leaned against the wall next to Seto, occasionally throwing casual looks to the others.

Even though Bakura was frowning, it was clear to the others that he was happy - or rather, happier than normal.

"As much as I agree with you cousin, don't you think this is a bit rushed?" Seto asked absently, shutting the book and giving the man his full attention, something that even Yami rarely got.

"To you, maybe, but we've already found two in hiding. I'm willing to bet there are more, and from the looks of it, with refuse to speak to us, they're trying to hide something. It doesn't take a genius," He answered. He looked to the door for a moment in thought, and continued, "Besides... I'm angry that people so important are even hiding among slaves. It worries me that they were able to hide it so easily for Ra knows how long."

"You have a point," Bakura agreed.

"Okay... I'll notify the guards and we'll go through with it tomorrow," Marik informed before walking out, mumbling something about arranging plans.

Yami let a sigh fall from his lips, letting his head fall back in deep thought about it all.

It wasn't until something else entirely came to mind that he allowed his thoughts pause – Yugi.

He didn't know why, but Yugi just appeared and slid so perfectly into his thoughts, like the last puzzle piece.

Yami had always been good at puzzles, but this one didn't make any sense.

He loved good challenge, though, and allowed his thoughts to flow once more, not once thinking back to that last piece of the puzzle.

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><p><strong>AN: There you go, I think it was about an average length, maybe a little short of a few 100 words, but it has everything I wish in there.**

**I'm sorry if you found Ryou's character in this chapter slightly OOC, but keep in mind that he's trying to harden his mind, for what reason, well you can always try and guess, I wont tell you yes or no, but it'd be fun to hear what you think is going to happen, so review or post away :D**

**Thanks for reading, and please review :)**


	13. A Broken Promise

******A/N 29/04/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by****_ Debbie the Fabulous_**** after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her :)******

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><p><strong>AN: Ah here we go, I got round to writing it XD. I'm having a sleepover tomorrow so I thought that I might as well get something down so I feel like I've done something worth doing to make up for the time I'll spend lazing around eating ice cream XD.**

**Oh and I finally put some stuff on my profile XD, it's mainly just stories to come and stuff I'm planning to write and stuff like that - Take a look if you really want.**

**Any thanks to anyone who; Read, Alerted, Favourited or Reviewed, Your the best XD.**

**Here's the chapter :)**

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><p>"Malik," Yugi began, soaking a cloth in the bucket of murky water next to him, "maybe it's just me being negative... but this isn't working at all."<p>

"Don't be – there's still a chance!" Malik reassured as he scrubbed the floor.

The words, whether or not he wanted to admit it, were more for himself than Yugi.

Malik sat up and looked at Yugi.

He wasn't having the best morning – or was it night? He couldn't tell; the two had been scrubbing the floor for so long that their hands were wrinkled and their knuckles had been rubbed red raw.

But no matter how bad his day was, one thing was clear, and that thing – the small boy opposite him with his head hung low, defeated, and hands weakly scrubbing the dirt from the floor – needed his complete attention.

Poor Yugi looked broken beyond repair, but Malik hoped beyond hope that he wasn't.

After talking for so long, they had run out of subjects to keep their minds off of the latest happenings, and the conversation had taken a hard left into dark territory. With vague words and phrases, it like nothing to anyone else, but the pair had a complete understanding of their discussion.

"Promise me something, Yug'," Malik whispered, trying to peer past the large mop of hair on Yugi's head, preventing him from seeing the boy's face. Yugi was silent, so he continued, "Promise me you won't do what I think you're going to do."

Malik was met with more silence as he studied the boy, and he noticed his friend stiffen before his shoulders began to shake violently.

"Yugi, Promise me!" Malik cried desperately, dropping the dirty rag before he gripped Yugi's shoulders with a jolt. Yugi!"

The only thing heard for a while was Yugi's almost silent sniffling as Malik composed himself.

"Promise me," he repeated quietly, still holding Yugi.

"I... I promise," Yugi whimpered weakly.

Malik heard this and let it soak in before he hesitantly released Yugi's shoulders and gave a sad smile, saying, "I'm sorry Yugi... But you can't... You just can't..."

Yugi nodded sagely and Malik began to scrub the floor once more, Yugi by his side.

They couldn't lose each other... All they had left was each other.

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><p>It wasn't until later in what Malik had found was actually day that Malik saw how dangerous the whole ordeal had become; several times, he had turned corners to find guards taking normal slaves in groups of three or four, or groups of slaves being brought in, shaken and confused.<p>

He was lucky, though – it took a lot longer for the guards to catch him, even after nearly being caught a few times and dragged off in the direction he swore the lake was in.

Because he had been so busy not getting caught, though, the pieces didn't click as fast as he would have liked, and he didn't see the danger immediately.

He couldn't believe he was stupid enough to miss something right in front of him until he'd almost been caught – Malik didn't take the King for a fool, but he was being a bit rash, wasn't he?

Maybe it was Ryou's capture that set it off.

There was one majour downside to being in the position he was in – slaves relied on guards for access to just about everywhere and to get new duties. Since it was impossible to go through a day without bumping into at least one, Malik was now stuck playing an advanced version of his favourite childhood pass-time, dodge ball, where the kids would throw balls at each other and try and dodge, and if you got hit, you were out. There were tons of differences, but most notable were the stakes.

Luckily, Malik had always excelled at sports – especially when it involved survival.

And survival it was – ducking behind a corner every time a guard appeared and rushing through his duties to find a place guards didn't occupy.

He could have laughed at how fun it had become if he weren't being reminded exactly what it was that he was running from; the adrenaline felt nice, and was a great way to just forget, but it was flushed from his system when he suddenly felt two hands on his shoulders.

He craned his head to the side and found a red-faced guard, more tired and annoyed at his job and life than at Malik.

Malik's gaze swept over the people beside the guard; a small group of three slaves and another guard. He guessed that he was just a pick up since there was no way that the guards could have been chasing him the entire time, what with his little disappearing acts.

He was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn't realize he was walking until he was covered in sunlight as they left the palace to the lake.

His eyes darted from left to right as he tried to think of an escape; he couldn't leave Yugi all alone. If another he was caught, then –

Malik looked up and saw how close they were to the lake, and the feeling of dread finally settled in the pit of his stomach; beside the lake was the head of the Royal Guard, and he realized there was no escape with guards in front and behind. Even if he tried to run, he knew the other slaves wouldn't do anything to stop the guards.

Deciding there was nothing else he could do, Malik dropped his head with the hope that he would fade into the background even though he knew it was a vain attempt.

He watched with a somber expression as, one by one, each slave was told to remove their shirts and was forced into the water with either a verbal command of a simple shove, only the girls objecting, who were then told to hold their shirts against their chests; their backs were all the guards needed to see.

Each person seemed to take longer that the last, but Malik knew it was only about five minutes perperson.

A few eternities later, one of the guards pushed the slave forward with the idea that he would cooperate like the others, but he was wrong.

"There's always a difficult one," Malik heard the guard mutter tiredly as his over-sized shirt was taken from his form and he was, without warning, pushed into the water in front of him, landing jaggedly on his hands and knees.

He tried to fight it at first, but the lake won easily and there was a burst of "fairy dust" as the spells concealing him and his secret were discharged, setting his strong, raggedy wings free and revealing his mark at the base of his wings in another shimmer of dust.

He growled – to him it was a growl, but to everyone else, it was a whimper – as the cover spells were ripped from his being and his mark was revealed. It looked like an ankh, something that people usually only heard about in books of different places that existed a long way back before them.

The guard's eyes widened several fractions at the sight of a large variety of cover and concealing spells being peeled off the weak-looking figure they had gathered when they had passed through the halls.

If anyone payed attention to the head of the royal guard, they would have seen a very different response to the boy's big reveal; a grin, stretching from ear to ear that faltered slightly when the boy's legs gave way and he fell into the water completely.

Marik pulled him out immediately, but Malik was already unconscious.

The little slave moved slightly, subconsciously moving closer to the source of warmth, and Marik's grin was back with a pair of kinder eyes.

"You know what you're looking for, so I'll leave you to continue your search," Marik stated, looking down at the bundle in his arms. "Everyone must report their findings to me at the end of the day, understood?" Marik barked.

The two still-shocked guards stared after him for a while before they finally found their voices and responded, "Yes, Sir!"

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><p>It wasn't until late in the evening that Malik had finally woken up and found a pair of wry brown eyes and a pair of curious, shocked honey eyes staring down at him.<p>

Before Malik could even focus his vision, his cheek was sour and red with a resounding echo to follow the pain.

He bolted upright and glared in the general direction of the culprit to find his blonde-haired friend standing before him with an apologetic grin.

Malik didn't even have time to yell before he noticed they weren't alone; looking around, he saw that it was he, Joey, Ryou, and three others. He scanned over them and remembered what had happened before his impromptu nap.

Malik looked around to glare at the person who had taken him, but noticed that he wasn't in the room.

He took a shallow breath and opened his mouth, looking over the people in the room again, uncertain if he should speak.. Joey wasn't saying anything, so what should he do?

He had the urge to yell, and everything seemed all wrong; the air in the room was thick and heavy, like something bad was going to happen – or was happening – but he couldn't figure out what.

As he tried to speak, he was interrupted by something else. It wasn't a slap or another conversation, but a knock at the door, and it opened to show the one person he couldn't hate more at the moment. Looking at his face, though, Malik stayed silent; something was wrong.

"My king," Marik addressed calmly. "I've just received word that all the slaves have been sifted through." He paused, making sure his attention was caught. "Your mate was not among them."

The king responded with a simple, rigid nod before he ran a tan hand through his hair in frustration.

Malik froze; that wasn't possible – Yugi was scheduled to be cleaning various places in the castle all day, so how could he...?

"But... he promised," Malik whispered to the quiet room, gaining everyone's attention. "It's..." He paused. "That's impossible. He couldn't have... actually _gone_...! Not to them..."

A solitary tear rolled down Malik's cheek; not only had a very important promise been broken, but he'd probably never see Yugi again – maybe not any of them.

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><p><strong>AN : And there we go, I hope it was good enough for you. I tried my best to get Malik in character but it's hard, since everytime I write about him I have his voice in my head and try not to laugh - Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged voice XD - Does wonders for the mind xD. But to me, Malik is a strong character that likes to mess around sometimes, but is a little too strong to keep it up all the time.**

**Just to let you know that there's drama coming up, so I hope your going to keep reading.**

**My birthdays soon - How old I'll be is classified, but I'm still and have been since I joined old enough to be on here, so it's all cool xD.**

**Thanks for reading and please if you can review :)**


	14. Craving from afar

******A/N 29/04/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by****_ Debbie the Fabulous_**** after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her :)******

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><p><strong>AN: Here we go, a little late but I was very busy, with being ill for two days, then being dragged off to London - Fun trip :D - Then the next day going to see the film 'The Raven' I recommend it, it is very good and quite funny in some places - More witty than anything but I couldn't help but laugh a few times.**

**I hope this chapter meets your lacking YamiYugi needs, it's rather indirect though - It's not hard to spot or anything, it's hard to explain what I mean by that, read and you'll probably know.**

**Anyway, Thank you anyone who; Read, Alerted, Favourited or Reviewed, Love you :D**

**Disclaimer : How clear do I have to make this? I own nothing, other than the plot line.**

**Anyway here we go :D**

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><p>Malik was quick to hold in his tears – even if he did release a few choked sobs that shook the white-haired head on his shoulder. His shirt was already wet from Ryou's tears, who was currently sobbing with incoherent words and sounds.<p>

An angry-looking Joey was close by, head hung and hands balled into fists, gathering the fabric at his thighs and bringing his clothes up from the floor they dragged on.

The others in the room stared on in confusion; they had been like this for the past fifteen minutes, but no one was going to just cut through the sorrow with a simple, "What's wrong."

Except, of course, for the ever-curious King Yami.

"Who is 'he'?" Yami inquired, freezing the latest two catches and making the first twitch.

There was a long silence where the three shuffled their feet nervously and Ryou raised his shaking head from the shirt he was still clinging on to for dear life. He made eye contact with his friends before hiding behind Malik, as if for protection.

"Y... Yugi." He finally sniffled.

It took a few moments for the others to understand the simple statement because of the boy's sobs.

"Yugi?" Yami repeated; there was something about that name, and it seemed natural having it come off his tongue – despite the few times he had ever said it.

Joey picked up his head enough to look over at the king from under his mop of blonde hair and nodded.

"Might as well tell ya now. Yugi's ya mate."

His voice was detached and hollow, like the statement alone had insured imprisonment.

Despite how it was said, Yami brightened – and somehow, darkened – considerably; how had he _not_ noticed his own mate under his own nose this whole time? Surely _something_ could have given him a clue! How had he...?

The young king stopped; his fists were clenched so tightly on his desk that his knuckles had turned a stark white, and he could see the little white-haired slave – Ryou, if he remembered correctly – shrink back in fear and the blonde, Joey, flinch like they were bracing themselves for a foul punishment.

"Okay," Yami sighed, taking a brief moment to calm himself. "How about: who are 'they'?"

Seto scanned over the meek figures in front of him, taking in their reactions; how Ryou practically went into fetal position in Malik's arms, and the way Malik paled, but most of all, the way his mate, his pup, had shrunk down, wings drooping and eyes hiding under his fringe of blonde hair.

Overall, a feeling of defeat rang in the air.

"_They_," Malik began, putting as much force he could into his statement, "are... people we're not going to talk about."

He couldn't say he didn't try, but his words seemed hopeless – nothing more than a child, claiming he wasn't afraid as he hid from the monster under the bed.

"This isn't helping," Bakura growled from his place in the corner, making Ryou squeak.

"Fine then," Yami conceded. "Where is Yugi? He was clearly a... _slave_... here... but he wasn't present during any of the... _checks_," he stated, choosing his words with great care, wincing physically and mentally at the knowledge that his mate was a slave, under his rule, under his nose.

"Wit' dem. Dat's da best guess," Joey spat dejectedly; he was strong and angry, but he seemed hopeless, like a dog in a gutter – no hope and no life left in him.

Yami's heart clenched when he thought about it; these people, whoever they were, however bad they were told to be, were with his mate... even if there wasn't any real proof or connection yet, he could feel it; deep within him, he could feel the large empty gap that had always been so cold and dark being filled with warmth and light...

But how long it was going to stay... may be a problem.

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><p>Yugi clung to the tree for dear life, righting himself from another fall.<p>

He could barely stand without something to hold on to, but he stubbornly trudged on, tripping every so often.

The shirt he wore was ripped in several places, his bare feet were bleeding and covered in mud, and wet twigs stuck to his arms and legs as he soldiered on through the lush, thick forest.

A large, dark shadow cast itself over the forest floor and the sound of a flock of birds filled the air. Looking up, Yugi found they weren't just any birds, but black birds, with black eyes; the birds of death, crows, with wings much the opposite of his own and him entirely – the dark to the light.

He continued on with a hazy gaze, not daring to look anywhere but ahead lest he feel the fear kick in and do something stupid; he couldn't back out – not now; this may be his only hope, since he couldn't stay in hiding any longer. They'd been found, and there was nothing left.

He only hoped he wasn't too late to save the ones... _things_... at stake.

Dying for those at stake wasn't the problem for him, even if he could feel his fear of death lingering in his body... but there was also his fear of what they would do if they didn't kill him.

He didn't even want to think about it.

He trudged on, using the trees to keep from falling and ignoring the pain in his feet from the mud and twigs and various other things on the forest floor being ground into them; there was something much more painful than what he was enduring physically.

The pain in his heart was much louder than that of his body, and every time he gave some thought to his actions, heart would clench – not only at his broken promise, but also at that the empty gap inside him.

He felt it begging for something; something that most don't crave.

Even in the dimly lit forest, he craved darkness... and love.

_Love_...

Yami's image came to mind, and no matter how hard he shook his head to shake the image, it stayed.

He'd always watched the king from afar because no matter how much he wanted to give a relationship between them a go, he couldn't; there was way too much at stake for such a selfish desire.

He wouldn't... even if it meant death.

But now he wished he could have shared a few moments with Yami, if only to see if they could love each other.

He shook his head again; there was no using thinking of the "what ifs;" He had a job to do, and he needed to do it to save what was at stake.

For his friends, and for him.

At that, he quickened his pace.

He couldn't just sit around anymore; these could be his last waking moments, and they were spent on Yami.

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><p><strong>AN: A little short I know, but I didn't want to put too much in to this chapter, it was kind of a one moment impro thing, just make it up along a plot line that I created in my head as I go along, while trying to actually get some main pairings in there, before I ruin the whole story, type thing. **

**Any way, I hope you liked the small YamiYugi moments, and a slight hint of SetoJoey in there. There's drama to come :D**

**Also I managed to actually put something on my profile recently, like the stories I'm planning to write when I'm done with this, I put the summary up there, but I'm going to have to change it on a few before they're too long.**

**But anyway, thanks for reading and please review :)**


	15. A rock formation in the woods

**A/N 29/04/12 : EDITED chapter, BETA'd by_ Debbie the Fabulous_ after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her :)**

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><p><strong>AN: Where should I start, well... I'm sorry for this being the first update in about a month, I have been really busy with everything and it took me a long while to upload the edits of this story. I will try and update my other two stories soon, it's just this one is the one I haven't updated in the longest, I will try and update 'Toxic' after this then I will update 'A True Queen'. Sorry for the very long wait .**

**I did originally try writing this chapter a while ago, but it turned out terrible, it was like I threw up on my computer then slammed my head against it in an effort to give you guys something to read. But I knew better than to let my Beta shift through such terrible writing that I just told Debbie not to edit that one when I sent it - After about 2 minutes of thinking it through. This is the second attempt at writing the story and it's a hell lot better than the first attempt - Even if it is a little short.**

**I would like to bring everyone's attention to my poll on my profile, just a little bit of data gathering since this story was edited so far through I feel a little bit at doubt - I prefer having a beta at first because then it's like a whole journey with them, rather than them shifting through old documents. But nevertheless Debbie has done a great job of shifting through these chapters :P I would be very grateful if everybody could reread this story, fill in the poll and give us some feed back in the reviews or something :P**

**Thanks anyone who; read, alerted, favourited and reviewed - Love you lots :D**

**Now might as well get on with the story, huh?**

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><p>Yami flew through the trees at break-neck speed, wind pounding against his face and small water drops clinging to his clothes as he continued what he had been doing for so many hours now: following his mates scent.<p>

_He's not my mate yet_, Yami thought, his bat-like wings – big enough hit the trees though somehow avoiding them – wings flapping powerfully on his back.

Behind him were some of the very few people he trusted: Seto, Marik, and Bakura, each carrying their respective mate with some difficulty as they tried to match the incredible speed that their king was surging forward with.

Ryou, Malik, and even Joey didn't dare move as they clung to their mates for dear life, looking out ahead of them and the fall that awaited if they did let go.

They remembered the long hours that had passed in that room until they had finally given up and released the information the powerful men needed to know... but not what they _wanted_ to know.

Who are they?

What did they do?

What did they have to do with this?

Why are you afraid of them?

No; the former slaves only told their mates where to find "them," but even that was little help, so it was decided – after much frustration because no one came up the idea before – that they'd follow Yugi's scent; just because there wasn't a bond between the king his look-alike didn't mean he didn't have a scent.

Shadows from their surroundings flicked across Yami's face. His eyes were narrowed and his lips drawn into a tight, faint frown, and you could tell when he was going to change course when his nostrils flared.

No one had dared to speak since they left the castle for fear of the consequences; while Yami was easily angered, he could control it, but now... _now_, it looked like all Hell would break loose if someone rubbed him the wrong way, and he would continue to look like that until Yugi was found – _safe_.

Ryou whimpered quietly as he tried to get comfortable; being over Bakura's shoulder was not exactly "comfy" – especially when the black leather wings smacked against his legs. When they did, he squeaked softly.

It went unnoticed by everyone except Bakura, who smirked every time, and although it hurt, it at least ditracted him from their current situation: flying through a dark, damp and cold forest, looking for a friend that could be gone by now.

They continued on this way for a while before Yami stopped short and perched on the large branch of a tree, his leather-like bat-wings fluttering slowly to a stop and stirring the leaves on the trees around.

"What is it?" Seto called, the only one brave enough to find his voice at this point.

"We're close, but..."

The king growled and his faint frown became clearly visible.

No one moved – or even spoke – and a long silence stretched between the group before Yami took off without warning, going far faster than before, wings destroying just about everything in his path.

Marik was the first to respond, bolting after him and calling, "But _what_?" wind whipping his hair around his face as he tried to keep up with the incredible speed only a king could produce – which was easier said than done, since he still had Malik in his arms.

They group never recieved an answer but carried on after their king anyways, beating and abusing the poor trees around them with every powerful flap of their wings, leaving a nice trail or broke branches and settling leaves.

It wasn't long before they came to a clearing with a large, rock-like figure standing in it.

Yami studied his surroundings as he landed, noting the large hole in the rock: an entrance.

He had taken a few steps forward and lifted his head a bit, searching for the scent he had been following all this time when a weird, protective urge came over him and his wings unfurled once more, but in a threatening way; it was _far_too strong for it to be _just _bodily odor, so it must have been spilt form the body.

He clenched his teeth to hold back the harsh growl he could feel erupting from his throat and made his way to the cave, not bothering to wait for the others.

Speaking of which – the former slaves were shaken just by the sight of the cave, to the point where Malik was doing everything in his exhausted power to get away from it and Marik, failing completely when Marik strengthened his hold on the boy and brought him closer.

Ryou was struggling as well, but not nearly as much as Malik; Ryou was laying quietly, moist eyes darting back and forth as images he'd rather not see came to the forefront of his mind, kicking or trying to push Bakura away every so often, annoying the lord endlessly and making him tighten his grip.

Joey was doing something similar to Malik before Seto's insults took his attention from their situation and encouraged him to fight back, eyes darting to the cave and back to Seto's much like a lost puppy... but at least he wasn't yelling like he used to.

And Yami was completely oblivious to all of it as he walked into the cave.

The inside surprisingly well-lit and dry, compared to the previous surroundings that got darker and wetter the further you went.

It was still cold, but he payed little mind to the temperture as his foot steps echoed through the cave.

"Lookie, lookie – what do we have _here_?" A voice called from one of the farther, darker corners of the cave.

The young king snapped his head in that direction... a. little faster, and he would've gotten whip lash.

Marik, Bakura and Seto had finally managed to enter, moving their respective mates forward in front of them.

The smaller trio tensed and made another desperate attempt to escape. Joey was even kicking and pleading, but could it be called that? It came out more like a trail of whimpers and cries of panic directed towards the High Priest.

"Who's there?" Yami called forcefully, freezing the former slaves to their spots.

"Now, _now_, Yami-boy! No need to act _so_ up-tight,"the voice said, its figure emerging from the shadows: long, silver – almost purple – hair covering half of his face as his arms flared about in an odd fashion. He wore a top and bottom similar to a king – or rather, queen, since it was such a light red it was almost pink – along with a large, dark blue bowtie.

Ryou let out a desperate cry and kicked Bakura in the knee, making the elder realease him.

Tears welled in his wide, brown eyes and his breath coming out in a trail of small pants and whimpers in puffs of misty vapor, showing just how cold the cave was as he made another desperate run for it.

He only got so far before he tripped over and tried to scramble away, earning an amused stare from the silver-haired man.

Bakura leapt at the chance to quickly pick up his mate and pull him close, letting out a rather possessive growl towards... everyone.

"Who are you?" Yami called, throwing a confused glance to the panicked Ryou before looking back to the man before him.

"Oh, you've forgotten me, have you? My _dear_ Yami-boy!" He called, letting in a playful edge to his voice. "Oh, how I'm hurt!" He said, placing a hand over his heart and feigning a hurt expression.

"Just get to the point, already!" Marik barked, annoyed enough to join in. "Who are you?"

"Oh, alright then," he replied, a grin stretching his lips. "_My_ name is Maximillion Pegasus, and _I_ will be the future king."

Those words echoed throughout the cave and Yugi's scent was slowly fading from memory, despite the fact that it was getting stronger by the second.

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><p><strong>AN: Here we go, I dropped it on a bit of a cliffy - sorry for that, but it's about as much as I could write in one go, while keeping the story good. I just wanted to write a chapter that could be good enough to lead us off from that terrible gap of nothingness - sorry again, I would get on my hands and knees and beg for your forgiveness, but you wouldn't be able to see it, so there's no real point in it.**

**I really hope that the chapter was good enough for the lacking of updates recently :) - short yes, but I explained up at the top.**

**(By the way, I'm not sure if it will come out like this, when posted, but during editing the top A/N has turned grey, I don't know how or why, and I can't change it back, so if it's difficult to read, just switch to the black background up at the top of the text settings or simply highlight it, I'm sorry if this turns out to be a problem).**

**Thank you for reading, terribly sorry again, but please review :D**


	16. Dying wishes

****** after offering to correct my grammar and so on, so the punctuation and typos have been done and fixed by her :)******

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><p><strong>AN: Well here we have it, I know this is really late. I do have a small list of excuses, one was, that I thought I had actually updated not that long ago, so you can only imagine my surprise when I saw the date of last update - I almost dropped my cup of tea =.= But I'll say a reason why I did push to finish this chapter (other than it had been ages since I last updated) and that's that I feel a little disappointed when I saw the Yu-Gi-Oh fanfictions that were actually updating. There aren't even that many of them, and those there are aren't interesting me so I'm having to get on with writing my own to hopefully spark some people to write more interesting story lines -.-**

**Also, I seemed to forget how to write Yugi the first time I wrote this and it came out like Joey, I almost punched something. But I've rewritten it the best I can for the moment. Writing's becoming more difficult the further I get in to a story, but no worries, I will finish my stories - even if it does take a while. I know the pain of reading a story and then having it stopped because the writer has lost all interest, it annoys me and I'm not becoming the subject of my own hate.**

**Anyway, now I've spoken enough, thanks for anyone who; read, alerted, favourited or reviewed this story :D Your one of the reasons while it's still going :D**

**We better get on with the story now :D**

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><p>Eyelids kept trying to hide the glazed purple jewels hidden beneath them.<p>

Was this it for him?

He knew that coming here would only end in tears, but this... No. _That_... was his last option.

He really didn't want to die, but the pain he was in at the moment was enough to wish for it. It was like his insides were at war with each other, and he was losing blood quickly as it trickled out of his mouth and nose, being forced by his insides to move aside.

The pain on his back was probably one of the worse though; his normally beautiful wings were now nothing more than a pile of bloody feathers and broken bones, and he was sure that they would never work again—especially since he could make out the blurry image of some of his feathers, once a pure white, now nothing more than a rotten grey splotched with red scattered carelessly in front of him.

He didn't even think that he could consider himself a light any more.

But it was only a small sacrifice to possibly save his friends.

Who knows? They might have actually listened to and respected his wishes so they could be spared from this torment.

That, though, was very unlikely to happen, and he knew it, but he steadily wished for it more and more, just as the puddle of red beneath him steadily grew.

Salty water started to drip down his cheeks, irritating the wounds in their chosen path.

He let out a quiet sniffle as his mucus starting mixing with his blood, dimly thinking how disgusting a sight it was but deciding it didn't matter at the moment.

It hurt so much...

The only thought he could formulate and focus on was how much pain he was in, and the fact the his emotions were everywhere wasn't helping him at all to deal with it.

He wanted his friends to be sage and happy, but the more time passed, the more he came to realise that he probably just doomed them all.

Was his death enough to make up for it, though? A life for a life?

No. That would never be fair. No life was ever worth another, let alone several.

It was his fault anyways; he was the one who had managed to get them all into such dangerous positions.

They had chosen to work and live at the castle because no one cared about slaves, and there was no way there could be a mate for one of the higher-ups among them. In terms of being discovered, it was a lot safer than living in the villages where they would have been handed over the second any amount of power had been sensed emanating from them to "help the kingdom" or to line their pockets with a few extra coins.

They would have been in trouble an dead a lot more quickly if that had happened to them.

There was simply no place that was safe for them; they were being watched constantly without their even knowing, and that was a big deal for Yugi.

His appearance gave others the impression of childish obliviousness, but he wasn't stupid, and he knew that if he did one thing wrong, he would have been lured and killed—like he should of been, if not for his grandpa.

No one should ever underestimate his grandpa.

He had watched the way the man had walked away from a bloody battle, barely able to stand, but his opponent not much better.

For the sake of his friends and grandpa, he followed the new plan; hide and keep his identity a secret.

They messed up big time, though, underestimating the wills of the rich and power of their marks, almost triggering feelings for people they'd never really met before.

The pull was so strong that it nearly crushed Yugi the first time he felt it, but after a while he learned that it was best to avoid all people in contact with the king unless it was for a short period of time.

As more time passed, it became more clear to him that he needed to follow the plan. His Grandpa was getting older and weaker now, and there was no way he could walk out of a real battle alive, and they knew that. If Yugi even dared to talk to the king about him being his marked mate, then his grandpa would be on his knees crying in pain before he could even finish his sentence.

Thinking through all of this was giving him a headache, and his vision was steadily blurring.

But at least the pain was fading. His body was getting more numb and cold by the second.

Any other time it would have terrified him, but this time... this time... he let a small smile grace his lips as he finally let his eyelids win.

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><p>Yami was becoming more and more like an animal by the second.<p>

His hand, now clawed, was almost one with Pegasus' face, as he repeatedly slammed the man's head into a bloody mess against one of the many jagged stone walls of the cave

His eyes flickered red with anger once more; how _dare_ he do that... how _dare _he say that... how dare he even _think_ of it!

And to his face!

_His_ face, of all people!

His breath came out in ragged, angry pants as he continued beating the body beneath him to a near-death state; he wasn't going to kill him.

Not yet.

He'd make him suffer for everything he'd ever done.

His friends watched on with the same fire in their eyes, but they held their anger back.

Just watching the scene in front of them was enough to put you off eating—forever.

All the blood on the wall... and all the blood on the now-mangled man it came from, all of it dripping down to the floor to collect in a pool...

If they hadn't sensed—or rather, seen—how powerful he was, they would have declared him dead long ago.

They could already see that his future was a blank one consisting only of pain and death by their hands, and they would have it no other way; this person... no—this _thing_—had dared to say all those horrible things, and would pay dearly for it with pain and his soul.

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><p><strong>AN: I know it's short, and I know not all of it makes sense, but I have reasons and it all does make sense. If your wondering about the end bit, I'll leave a small question for you to help, "What unearth did Pegasus say, to get them so angry?" I'll say this now, it's not just the last line of the last chapter :P So I dropped it on a bit of a cliffy for you.**

**I know this was short, but to be honest, this chapter was most about Yugi and the truth than anything else, I figured it was about time to draw the curtains and for you guys to peek inside. But I haven't drawn the curtains completely so there's still more to come :P**

**This story is going to be ending in the next few chapter, I predict 5, but I have a feeling it may drag on a little longer or maybe even a little shorter. **

**Anyway, I really hope you enjoyed this chapter, I really hope that there are some people on Fanfiction who will be willing to fulfil my wishes and help lift my disappoint for the short list of updates that have come from the Yu-Gi-Oh stories (Not that I'm saying all are bad, there is a few that have been dotting on my interests and I've been considering to read, but I have to push some things out of the way to do so).**

**Thanks for reading :D Please review :) and so sorry for the prolonging waits that have been happening to this story.**


	17. Raging Animals

**A/N: Beta'd by **_Debbie the Fabulous _**who basically fixed what used to be a mess in this chapter XD.**

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><p><strong>AN: It's been a while hasn't it? Almost two months =.= I'm sorry, I was trying to update but I wasn't sure what was to happen in this chapter, because this chapter is important for the run up to the ending. I'm not sure if I should do the really bad ending that I normally growl about when I've finished reading a fanfic or a good happy one where everyone goes and lives with the pixies XD. What ending do you think I should do? **

**By the way, just to let everyone know, because I've taken so long to update I'm going to do a double update. I'm going to update as soon as I can within the next few days I'll be trying to write it out. But It wont be posted till this story drops off the first page of the YamiXYugi search thingy (you know, the thing where you fill in the pairing, language and what not and then it comes up with the most recent stories that have been posted XD). So lets just hope that people start posting quickly XD.**

**Thanks to anyone who has; Read, Alerted, Favourited or Reviewed - Your so amazing and I love you so much :D!**

**Ooo... And I've only just noticed something, did you know where only two alerts away from 100 alerters! :D - It makes me so happy :D. Normally people post out celebration messages when they've reached 100 reviews, but sadly I completely forgot about that and we've long pasted that mark XD, but oh well :D Thank you to everyone who's followed this story from the beginning and those who have just started following more recently, I'll make sure this story goes out with a bang :D**

**Anyway, lets just get on with this :)**

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><p>He had been scared stiff when Pegasus spoke. He spoke of things that he shouldn't have; reasons and plans. He had no clue why he revealed it all, but maybe it was because he thought he stood a chance against the man in front of him.<p>

He was wrong.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, large brown eyes watched Pegasus's body drop to the ground with an audible thud; Yami had finally released him from his vice-like grip, and all Ryou could do was stare at the unmoving body in horror.

His fingers tightened around Bakura's shirt. He never wanted to let go. The scene in front of him was horrible—it was like one of those stories he'd been told as a child to scare him. Sure, the man may have deserved it for what he had done, but this... this was just horrifying.

But still, the more he looked, the more he could not close his eyes. They only seemed to widen as he stared at Pegasus's glazed eyes.

The man was still alive, he knew that, but only barely. He had managed to fall on the edge between life and death.

The situation brought back many painful memories from his childhood when they had originally entered the palace with the hopes of not being found out. It was easier when he was younger, but as he got older, he began to feel the pull more and more when he was around the higher ups. They were meant to stay there and watch them find other people to mate with.

They knew it would endanger the kingdom, but to be honest, it was all they could do; there always too much on the line.

Pegasus spoke of a time when he made the group watch him murder Ryou's younger sister because they became "too close to the higher-ups," is what the man said, and they paid for it.

If she had been the only hostage, they wouldn't have kept it up for so long, but the man had many more; Yugi's grandpa was once young and powerful, but not anymore. He wouldn't stand a chance against Pegasus and he made sure they kept that in mind.

The man in question knew nothing about it, of course; he just lived life day by day, not knowing how in danger he really was.

And then there was Joey's little sister—she had only just survived being slaughtered like the rest of Joey's family. She was supposed to die in the freak storm meant to kill the entire family, him included, but he dragged his sister out and collapsed in front of Grandpa's house, earning their help.

Of course, after hearing that they had survived, she became a hostage and was dragged by her hair to the very cave the were standing in.

It was a horrifying sight; she was dying of blood loss and they only barely managed to save her.

She now lived a half-life; she was blind, but she found a husband that could look after her well. Unfortunately, Pegasus always kept her in his sight.

Then there was Malik's step-brother, a man who swore to protect Malik with his life.

Sadly enough, that's what he had to do. He had been tortured numerous times before anyone even knew he was a hostage. He survived, but only barely.

He lived quietly, away from the kingdom in the nearby forest. It was darker, but more dangerous. It was harder to hide from Pegasus, but he didn't seem to mind. Every time they saw him, even when he was being beaten half to death, he would have a gentle smile on his face for them.

It shook Malik's heart every time, and he easily succumbed to Pegasus' plan before anything bad could happen to his brother.

Ryou could only barely managed to block out his thoughts as he squeezed his eyes shut, unable to watch his king raise his hand to his lips and them clean of the dying man's blood.

To think that he had managed to hide from this man for so long... he was worse than the rumours dished out to new slaves that talked about what happened to people who went mising after receiving punishment from him...

He didn't believe them at all at the time, but now... _now_, he believed them all.

The action alone was animalistic, and what made it worse was the fact that his mate, the person who he was—doomed in his eyes—to spend his whole life with, just watched on, eyes glinting with sadistic pleasure.

They were animals, the whole lot of them.

His eyes opened of their own accored when he heard some shuffling, his curiosity getting the better of him. He saw Yami lifting Pegasus up by the collar of what used to be a clean pristine suit and launch him in his direction.

Ryou was terrified to say the least.

He let out a startled squeak and threw himself away from Bakura, landing on a pile of stones. Bakura himself was unfazed and caught the dying man in a single hand.

He whimpered quietly as his supposed mate threw him a confused look before heaving Pegasus over his shoulder and moving over to him.

All Ryou could do was scramble backwards.

"N-no!" he gasped. "P-p-please!" He screamed, bringing his hands up as a makeshift shield.

After a few moments, he just watched as Bakura slowly placed a large hand on Ryou's arm and gave it a comforting squeeze.

"Shh..." he hushed, voice was surprisingly soft as he pulled Ryou back up to his feet. "Don't be afraid," he whispered quietly, his free arm wrapping itself around the smaller's waist.

Ryou could only stare up in amazement; never in his life had he thought that this man would be capable of such softness.

The thought made him feel a little more relaxed as he leaned on him, seeming to forget about the dripping Pegasus on his mate's shoulder.

"Bakura..." Came a snarl that made him tense up and remember the king's presence.

He didn't seem any calmer now than before, and then feeble former-slave was reminded of something else; the reason they came here in the first place.

Yugi.

He quickly blanked out the short conversation that passed between Yami and Bakura as he frantically looked around for any sign of his short friend.

"Yes," Bakura's voice cut into his thoughts as he was suddenly sifted up onto the man's shoulder.

"W-wait!" he cried. "P-put me down! We need to find Yugi!" He screamed, thrashing about violently to get out of the man's grip.

"No," came the adamant response. "It's too dangerous here for you. You're still healing. We're taking you back with this scumbag," he growled, adjusting said scumbag on his shoulder, "while the king and priest look."

Ryou looked over to find Malik in a similar position, though the blonde clearly had more energy than himself.

He could only watch with wide eyes as they turned away from the cave.

His kicking became more frantic before he went limp seeing the cave shrink into the trees with the growing distance.

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><p>Yami squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to pick up the scent they were following before getting distracted.<p>

He sneered in disgust at the blood in front of him; it didn't even taste that good.

His sneer faded as he let out a sigh before turning his nose up to getter a better whiff of the air, blocking out the vile scent of that... _thing's_ blood.

It was then that he smelt something; a sweet scent that almost made him light headed smelling it, and made him feel warm inside, and increased his anger ten-fold.

He let his head fall back as he let out a screech of fury, completely forgetting about Seto as he raced off on his great wings, his anger giving him seemingly boundless energy.

He knew this scent; he had smelt it many times before.

It was blood, but not just any blood; it was Yugi's blood. His mate's blood... or rather, his mate-to-be's blood.

He shook his head; that didn't matter at the moment. All that mattered was that there was a lot of it—way too much for a simple cut.

He mentally kicked himself for not smelling it before.

He was an idiot! A stupid, dumb, idiot!

He paid no mind to the flapping of wings behind him; it was Seto—probably following him in hopes of aiding his search.

Suddenly, he stopped, not even moving a muscle before he just as suddenly turned to a wall in his way, and slashed it down with his claws, throwing the rocks, dirt, and various other debris everywhere.

What was behind the wall froze him solid.

He couldn't believe it.

He was really a stupid, dumb, idiot.

He didn't even hear the shocked sound that came from Joey behind him.

His world just stopped as he stared at what was in front of him.

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><p><strong>AN: I decided to put little Ryou's view of the situation in here, after all, he hasn't had many parts to do for a little while now. And I kept Joey and Seto behind because we haven't actually heard from them for a while XD. I said that this chapter would be important for the overall ending, but I didn't decide which one to do so I left it on a cliffy, sorry XD. Let me know how you think it should end please :) I need help deciding :P.**

**I tried to explain the situation that got Yami angry as well as I could, but sadly it didn't turn out that great, so my poor Beta had to work with what she had and try and fix it XD. Sorry! I'll try and make sure that the next update is better :).**

**Also I hope that everyone has noticed the cover picture :D - I drew it a while ago, but I'm not very happy with it since it has a lot of mistakes in it. But it'll do for now, I want my three main stories to have cover pictures so this story needs to have one too XD. I hope you like it :D (Even if one arm is hugely fat compared to the other XD).**

**Anyway, thanks for reading, please review :D And look forward to an update soon :)**


	18. A Faint Beat

**A/N: EDITED 03/09/12**

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><p><strong>AN: **_Debbie the Fabulous_ **My wonderful Beta finally managed to defeat the evil tech monsters, so here's the new and improved chapter, it's a lot better than the one before XD.**_**  
><strong>_

**I'm starting school again on Thursday (six weeks break is over :'(), so I might not be able to update frequently, but I will try my best to do what I can :P, I can't make any promises but since this story is almost finished then of course I'm going to finish up the loose ends quickly :P.**

**Anyway, thank you to anyone who; Read, Alerted, Favourited or Reviewed - Love you :D :D :D**

**Like I mentioned in the last chapter, I forgot to do 100th review, and I decided that looking back 50 reviews isn't going to be very productive, so instead I just got my 100th alerter! :P - so a big thanks to **_Atem-Yami-Yugi4alltime_ **for breaking in to the 100's XD.**

**We might as well move on then XD here's the chapter :D**

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><p>He was frozen; for some reason, he could not physically react to the scene before him, even though he was creaming his lungs out and tearing the whole bloody cave apart on the inside.<p>

He was ready to kill. Now.

And that's just what he was going to do... when he got back, that is.

His murderous thoughts faded some when his attention turned back to the being in front of him and invisible hands tugged at his heart; he felt so empty... like he just lost something important, or something that he'd never had but knew he needed.

And it hurt.

Comprehending these new feelings was extremely difficult for him; all his life, he hardly ever felt anything for anyone. He had been looking for his mate for so long... and now, a mere five days before his birthday, he'd found him, but it felt like he had lost him all in the same day.

The one that held his attention was Yugi; the small boy who had served him on his hands and feet and had hidden from him so well. "Little One" was what Yami had called him by by mistake once while the little slave was working, and the king always found it strange how the name had just rolled off of his tongue. It gave him quite the shock and seemed to scare the boy even more, and now he knew why.

There was so much blood around the frail body that he looked like a bottle of wine that had been knocked onto its side, and it scared the king to think that might not have been any left in the small boy.

Some of Yugi's feathers lay crinkled about around him and Yami could tell that they were once white through their dull grey and black specks of what was probably dried blood. They looked like they'd been picked right off, one by one, and the king could only imagine the kind of pain the boy was in.

His wide, crimson eyes trailed up to the little one's wings themselves, and a sharp intake of breath followed; the bones were a broken mess, splintering like wood in many places and the feathers—wherever there were any—stuck out at jagged angles. To call them "wings" would be completely inaccurate; they were a mess.

He was brought back to reality when he saw something moving from the corner of his eye, and the king watched and tried to force back the growl building in his throat as his cousin moved forward and reached out to touch Yugi's neck. The priest's movements were slow and careful as he stepped into the pool of blood and crouched down beside the young boy, knowing that his cousin's eyes never left him.

Yami could only watch as his cousin placed his first two fingers at the base of his little one's neck and stayed silent for a few seconds before breathing a sigh of relief and turning to him.

"He's alive," he stated, "but only just. We must get him back to the palace now," he said, moving to pick up the boy before freezing when he heard a low growl behind him.

"I'll do it, Seto. You go ahead. Now," he ordered. "I'll be there soon," he said, earning a stiff nod as the priest retreated to where Joey had—surprisingly—been watching wordlessly from the gaping hole in the rock Yami had created and soon they took off, back to the palace.

When the pair was gone, the king let out a small gasp of relief as the ability to move returned, leaping to Yugi's still body and scooping it up in his strong arms in one swift movement, noticing the small mark in the centre: a square pyramid with many stray lines, like a complicated puzzle, and a small eye in the middle. The young king held the boy close at the sight of it, but not before sliding his thumb across the small mark in a comforting manner and pressing his lips to it, not caring about the taste of the blood; he finally found his mate, and he couldn't stop the feeling of warmth spreading through him.

It didn't last long, though; he could see that Yugi was paler than ever, and he would not, by any means, allow himself to waste any more time.

He set off at an unbelievable pace, running from death itself.

Now there was nothing stopping him from reaching the palace to save _his_ little one because now he had him, and he was never letting him go.

Never.

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><p>It wasn't long before Marik touched down on the ground in front of the palace, Malik kicking and punching at the air desperately from where he was situated over the man's shoulder in an attempt to find some way down; he shouldn't be here, he should be looking for Yugi!<p>

Unfortunately for Malik, the man who owned the shoulder he was slung over barely even flinched at the on-going assault... though, he did swear and scream his lungs out 'til he was red in the face every so often to stop the former-slave, but it only lasted until he didn't look ready to kill.

During the flight, Malik glanced over at Ryou, only to find that the white-haired boy wasn't struggling anymore; in fact, he was hanging limply Bakura's shoulder, eyes glazed over as they stared back in the direction they'd come from.

It broke his heart to see his friend like that, and he'd stepped up his attacks enough to fall out of the head of the Royal Guard's grip. And he would have, had the man not had his hand placed—'Annoyingly,' the blonde thought—on his behind.

When the group finally landed in front of the palace, Malik's wild thrashing faltered and he could only stare longingly at the path back to the cave as he realized they weren't turning back. It wasn't until the began moving again (on foot this time) that he went all out with his attacks.

"Hey!" he shouted, flailing about once more. "Put me down, you bastard! We need to go and get Yugi!" He screamed.

"Shut up!" Marik roared back, clearly annoyed. "Kingy can handle it," he said dismissively. "I've already got mine; there's no point in risking you for something that His Majesty can handle on his own," he argued, following the familiar halls to his own chambers.

A low growl of annoyance slipped from Bakura's throat as he watched Marik march proudly away; they were so loud, they were giving him a headache!

He felt Ryou stiffen on his shoulder at the sound, and the man merely sighed before moving the former-slave into his arms bridal style.

Large, chocolate eyes stared up at him in confusion; he didn't understand why he'd been shifted into the position, but... a small sigh of content escaped his lips; he was warmer this way. He said nothing against the change for that reason and the fact that he didn't want to anger the man.

The man carried him back to his chambers, and Ryou shivered as he always did when entering—and apparently, being carried in didn't change that fact.

The room hadn't changed since the last time he'd delivered something; it was still as dark as ever and his hands would still be swallowed whole by the darkness when they were anywhere but at his sides.

Poor little Ryou was having trouble deciding whether it was good or bad that he'd gotten used to the lack of light and could make out some of the furniture and objects around the room.

Bakura strode over to his usual spot and loosened his grip enough to let his bundle fall into his lap and reach over for the bottle of blood sitting carefully on the table beside him.

Said bundle was exhausted, and used what little was left of his strength to let his head fall carefully onto Bakura's shoulder, wherein he snuggled into it.

He would probably never be able to understand how he could feel so safe and warm and scared when in the presence of the this ferocious lion.

Bakura did nothing to move him; he seemed content with the simplicity of the action and their position, as he gave a small grunt of what was more than likely satisfaction.

The smaller closed his eyes as Bakura poured himself a glass of the thick, red liquid before gulping it down in seconds, but he didn't need to see it happen to be horrified; he'd seen it many times before, and was usually discomforted by the act. The only reason he wasn't shivering now was because he simply didn't have the energy; he was dead-tired.

His breathing eventually slowed and evened out and his mind had become the hazy field one encounters in a dream-like state, but before the fog could thicken, something slick and heavy landed on his cheek and he stiffened, eyes immediately opening to their widest state.

"Red is a good colour on you, Little Rabbit," the elder purred, placing a thumb just above the small, red bead and running it down the pale flesh, caressing it as he gathered the fluid. He brought his thumb to his lips and his tongue darted out to meet the substance before he spoke again. "I wonder what you would look like bathed in it," he said lowly, suggestive tones lacing his voice.

Ryou stiffened even more; it terrified him that this man might attack him and watch him bleed to death—even though the thought had always been somewhere in the back of his mind, locked away whenever it escaped so he could feel once more.

"Not now, though," he trailed, bringing the boy in his lap closer by hugging his waist. "Sleep, Little Rabbit," he whispered. "I'll wake you when your friend returns."

Ryou never expected such a smooth voice to come from the man.

His heavy lids fell once more and he went into a warm, peaceful slumber; yes, he could trust this man, and yes, he could trust the king to bring back his friend.

Bakura drank his blood like water as he watched with red, gleaming eyes the way a small smile pulled the boy's lips up slightly as he dozed, probably already dreaming.

There was nothing for the former slave to do now but sleep and heal for when Yugi returned, and then...

...and then they could all be happy again.

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><p><strong>AN: I hope you liked it :D It's a lot better now that it's been edited and gone through, so I hope you like it :D.**

**This chapter is a bitter of a filler I know, but I didn't want to do too much in one chapter, I either do it in pieces or in one huge block, there's no medium, when I get to a point I have to stop so I can start a new scene in the next chapter :P.**

**And yeah I know, I just cut you off in the middle of a saving Yugi scene, but we still learned some thing key here, he's alive! Or at least for now... :P.**

**I'll try and update soon, no promised but I'll try a lot harder :D Thanks for reading a please review :D**


	19. A Trusted Women

**A/N: Beta read and edited by _Debbie the Fabulous_ - thank you for putting up with me :)**

**Disclaimer : I own nothing apart from the plot for this story and so on... You get it by now.**

**Well... It's been a long time hasn't it? **

**Ha...**

**A lot has happened to me in that time, and I have made but also lost quite a few good friends. And for a while now, I've been too stressed. More stressed than ever. I wasn't able to write, everytime I did the problems would appear and block every creative thought. It angered me so much.**

**So here is the next chapter.**

**I can't say sorry enough for all the time that has pass between my last update and this. But I will try and work harder to update A LOT faster and I will try and make sure that those little accidents don't ever happen.**

**Thank you to all the; Views, Alerts, Favourites and Reviews that all of you have given towards this story - It's made me try and soldier on my best on to get my stories updating again :)**

**Thank you if you are still reading :) - but lets get on with this :****D -**

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><p>The doors flew open, one of them sent soaring from the base that held it, landing half-way across the room near an empty bed.<p>

Ishizu, with all of her power and experience, concluded that anyone who would cause such damage was either in such a panic that they did not care or just didn't care to live any more, but when she turned to see who it was, she saw one of the few exceptions.

The king, of course, was one of the few people who could get away with this—this, and murder—but after a moment of studying, she realized that he did fall into one of the two categories; his pupils were wide in panic, but the eyes themselves were narrowed in anger as he scanned the room like a hunter. The king was so panicked that he simply didn't care about the world around him.

Ishizu took a moment to compase herself before stepping forward, the movement immediately garnering the king's attention.

"My king," she said with a low bow.

As she rose, carefully watching for his reaction, she finally noticed something in the king's arms; a small bundle of... of _something__—_hair, cloth, and what was that red stuff...?

As she silently tried to decode the thing in her king's arms, he noticed their close proximity and thrust thing into her own arms.

"**Cure him,**" he ordered simply, his voice a low growl, causing her to freeze.

She couldn't stop the shudder that proceeded to run down her spine and ruin the king's mood. His eyes were only slits now as he bared his teeth, showing the full length of his fangs.

"**_Now!_**" he roared, snapping her out of her fear-induced state and letting her gather what she soon found to be a very young, very broken boy more comfortably in her arms.

She lowered the boy onto a bed to assess the damage as the king stood over her, watching her every move.

"Oh, my..." she gasped, spreading the boys wings as much as they would allow; they were oddly bent and stuck out in every direction that they shouldn't.

After a few moments of simply staring in shock, she finally took notice of how cold this boy was, and merely blinked at his static chest, her brows knitting close together.

She put her pointer and middle fingers against his neck, just under his jaw, and brought her head down to his chest, frowning deeply for a moment before picking up the boy's wrist and pressing her pointer and middle fingers lightly against it, as well.

She closed her eyes for a moment, taking in a breath with a slow hiss.

She glanced at the king, who was confused as he looked curiously at the situation.

She looked back to the boy, so young and full of promise; his wings were the biggest she'd seen to date, and she briefly wondered how these two had ever met, but she shook the thought, knowing it wasn't her business.

Her business was his life, and she just might be able to help.

She pressed her warm, rosy lips to the cold, pale ones beneath her and let out the air she'd gathered, her hands just above the breast bone, pushing forcefully, and she repeated this action, every so often pulling away enough to see if the boy's chest had begun a steady rise and fall or to pinch the boy's nose.

Yami trusted Ishizu with his life, so it made sense to trust her with his mate's, as well, believing whole-heartedly that his trust was placed well.

Though, he did doubt it once—the moment she had pulled away from little Yugi's wings and began checking for signs of life.

It hurt him to watch this battle between life and death, but he had a strong feeling that Yugi could still be saved; that he was not yet gone from this world, and for that, he was grateful.

But he couldn't help but think that maybe this feeling was wrong when she proceeded to breathe her life into him; maybe he hadn't saved the boy at all.

Maybe he had failed.

No longer was this about stuck-up suitors and their money-grubbing families, no; he felt that he'd actually begun to connect and bond with this boy, was ready to take that next step and hold him forever, in his arms.

But he didn't even know him—only his name.

Yugi.

It was such a nice name.

Was?

No. He shouldn't think like that.

Yugi _is_ such a nice name—one carved by the gods themselves and given to him.

Maybe not in the way he would have liked, but at least he had always been close.

And now, standing here, watching the woman that he trusted with his life attempt to save the boy that he knew almost nothing about, he craved nothing more than for that bond to be complete.

And it was then that he promised himself something_._

_When he had this boy, he would never let him go._

_Ever._

Because Yami wasn't just king by blood right.

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><p><strong>AN: There we go :) Again, I'm really sorry that I took so long to update - especially since this story was at such a moment *wince* - But hopefully now I will be able to update again sometime soon, and hopefully nothing will get in the way this time. (Although it seems that something's started up again, so I'm quite worried that I may get distracted by the situation again. But I will try my best to continue at a good pace with my stories).**

**Oh, and I just thought I might let people know, I'm a hater of author note chapters - so that is why I did not note at all, that I could not update (unless you keep an eye on my profile, but barely anyone does on here :P) - It gives people false hope of updates and just makes me annoyed when I read them. So I will only do so if I REALLY need to, I maybe should of posted one out about 2 months ago, but I really didn't want to make people think that I've updated, when really I'm just crying about how I can't update. It's bad on the heart.**

**Anyway, I'll be trying to update soon - please continue to read and please drop a review if you can :)**


	20. Darkness

**A/N: ****Beta read and edited by **_Debbie the Fabulous_** - thank you for being so good with me and this story :)**

**Disclaimer : I own nothing apart from the plot for this story and so on.**

****Thank you to all the; Views, Alerts, Favourites and Reviews that all of you have given towards this story - it made me happy to see everything, even the views made me happy. Goodness, I got so many after my break I think it was about 1,700 to 2,000 views in the days after I updated. I was so shocked, I've never had that much, sometimes 1,000 and that's a shock for me :P.****

****I missed it last time, but this time I wont so congratulations to the 200th reviewer - ****_Darker Clouds _**- And thank you everyone for getting us up to this point where we have reached 200 :O - I still remember me being giddy at 50 :P.**

**Hopefully it hasn't been too long since my last update - like it was last time.. ha... - it's still been a while though, I was actually planning to update for Christmas but well... I got stuffed with too much food and couldn't move enough to type out a chapter XD.**

**Anyway - lets just read :)**

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><p>He should've been used to it by now, but he wasn't; he absolutely hated darkness and how cold and unforgiving it was, and how could turn on you at any given moment, rip you to shreds and punish you for everything you'd ever done.<p>

And how powerful it was—it was the power that truly scared him.

He didn't understand many things in life.

People always took him as dumb because of his actions, but he wasn't dumb at all; he was actually very smart; he, as a mere child, could solve problems adults never could or struggled to.

How he missed those days dearly, but right now, everything was...

He looked around a bit and realized that he wasn't sure where he was.

It was just... dark.

The last thing he remembered was... what _was_ the last thing he remembered? He wasn't quite sure.

The blurred image of a woman's face flashed in his mind's eye; she was beautiful. So innocent, and skin so pale that it glowed, but... something was wrong.

More images flashed, stringing together to form fuzzy memories; his grandfather showing him many games to play, himself helping the elderly man around, kids mercilessly bullying him, and Joey...

He remembered him running into the shop, dirt covering his face—the first time he met him.

A small child with a brown cloak, white hair just visible from beneath the hood as he hid his face from sight, sister huddling close; Ryou.

Malik, smothered in bruises as he glared at them from the end of the alley way, a small puzzle set in hand—_"Key Game,"_ he thought, but he couldn't quite remember, and it was too blurry to really see, anyways.

Somehow, Yugi still made sense of it.

An image of the tall, over-powering form of the palace fluttered into his mind next; the cruel people, faces blank as they boomed orders and pounded their fists into other's flesh, and the trainers.

Then the king, half sitting, half laying across his throne, clearly bored; features so sharp and so bold and so amazing; the thick, black leathery wings spread behind him.

His heart pulled at the sight, and he remembered clearly the wonderful, painful feeling he had to resist.

Suddenly, Pegasus's face appeared, laughing and barking rules, and the the pain he felt from that came flooding back.

And one by one, they left; Joey was first, then Ryou... and what about Malik?

He didn't know, and it hurt his head too much to think about it.

He squeezed his eyes shut tight for a moment before he reopened them to find that oddly, every ounce of pain that he had just felt... was _gone_, replaced by an odd numbness, and instead of these fleeting images of people he had met, he was left with a long darkness.

Did it ever end?

Was he going to be here forever, in this darkness?

…

He didn't want that; he wanted someone to help him.

A name formed on his tongue, but when he opened his mouth to speak it, no sound came.

_"..."_

He tried again.

"..."

But to no avail.

_Why? Why isn't it working?_

He closed his eyes, concentrating; it had to work.

It just had to.

He could feel tears running down his cheeks, but there were none, and when he opened his mouth to speak this time, he could.

"_Yami!"_

His eyelids felt heavy, but he wasn't even sure if they were open or not.

It didn't matter—his was the only darkness he did like; Yami's.

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><p>Ishizu suddenly pulled away from the resting boy.<p>

She had been working on the boy for the past few hours, feeling his pulse changing constantly and never keeping a steady beat for more than a handful of minutes, and she felt that her neat image—trivial as it was at the moment—was slipping as she frantically hovered over the boy, repeatedly checking his pulse and tending to every wound mutliple times over.

The King had long since left the room, but she could feel his power lingering outside.

What surprised her was that, strangely, a sudden change took place; as the boy's heartbeat began a stronger, more steady pace, the king's power grew stronger.

The boy's chest heaved heavily with each labored breath, but at least it was moving; from what she had seen so far, half of his body bruised, and lots of torn tissue. He had at least 4 broken bones, and a fractures rib, and it was hard to tell what was skin and what belonged _in_ his skin... but that was just his body; his wings were a complete disaster in comparison., and she wasn't sure that there was any magic in this land that would ever be able to let him fly again.

It frightened her to no end to even think that this was possible, and it angered her to think that someone would ever do such a thing; a person's wings were cherished and worshipped—special permission was required to touch them, hurting them at all was breaking a law, and crushing them completely was just inhumane, and akin to tearing any other limb from a person's body.

She even thought of rearranging what was left of the poor things like a puzzle, because that's all they seemed to be at the moment; pieces torn and missing and bent or broken from "misuse."

She let out a sigh, it worried her to even think that such a thing could ever happen.

And to even think that this had happened to his boy—_this _boy, of all people!

From the shambled remains of his wings, she learned that he was a very powerful light, and she figured that with such power, he definitely had a mark, but through the mess of his broken wings, she couldn't find it.

And she couldn't just move them; she could destroy what little was left... if that was even possible.

For now, she would just work on his wounds and... was that a punctured lung?

Oh boy...

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><p><strong>AN: I feel like this chapter is a bit of a filler. But well, I hope it gave you a view of how bad Yugi is. I really didn't know how to write something that may seem life threatening and terrible. But I think that **_Debbie the Fabulous _**straightened it out well enough to understand XD.**

**I'll be trying to update soon, thanks for reading and please review if you have the time :)**


	21. A Needle and Thread

**A/N: Oh God... I'm so sorry! It turns out that this chapter has been sitting around for a VERY long time... I didn't even know... Either way it's here now, and hopefully I should be done with the next chapter soon enough - half written, being edited and rewritten. I've been very busy recently and I'm putting off doing Art and Photography projects just to write these, honestly though I don't feel that well at the moment. I get ill so often that it's not even a surprise anymore, but either way this is being uploaded from someone in PJs, fluffy warm socks, a black hoody that's too big for me and a huge fluffy dressing gown. So ill... yes I'm becoming.**

**Beta read and edited by**_ Debbie the Fabulous_** - you put up with me so well :D**

**Thank you everyone who has; read, alerted, favourited or reviewed - you help me a lot with getting this done- even though I don't seem to upload a lot, I do try whenever I have the ability to write you guys something 'decent' to read XD.**

**So on with this, since people have been asking for the next chapter... I'm sorry it was sitting around.**

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><p>Ishizu stared at the piece of work before her. In all truth it was not a piece that most would consider work, but this was her work. Before her on one of the blanketed beds laid the small boy that she had been caring for... In all her years she had never had to rearrange and fix so many bones on one small body.<p>

It was only after hours and days of switching between placing his bones in place and serving people with just simple head aches and bruises. Her days had been very difficult but finally she was able to see what the boy once was.

Of course... That was in terms of his figure... His wings however, she had tried her best to place them back in to shape but she highly doubted that they would ever be able to do the job they were once meant for, the way that the bones stuck out at awkward angles and the feathers were ruffled and missing from several patches. She still stuck by what she thought before, whoever ruined such big and beautiful wings had just done a crime with no light punishment.

No matter how long she worked and healed on the wings, they did not seem to change all that much other than to just slightly resemble the structure... the glow they probably once held was long gone and now they were a dusty grey colour with pale skin stretched out under the depleted feathers.

His wings were not the only thing that was showing little to no sign of improving; It had been a whole month since her King had harshly stormed in and demanded the healing of the boy, and the boy had no shown any signs of waking up since then... In fact the most he did was sweat and bleed – everything else seemed just like a blank canvas.

This however did not stop the King from visiting. Everyday he would come after his duties and stand before the boy, his hand sometimes stroking his cheek or even lifting the boy ever so slightly then placing a hand under the boy's body and gently gliding his fingers over a spot between the boys wings.

It had her very curious of what was between the two, but she never questioned it. It was not her place, she would just simply do as she was ordered to and tend to her patient like she always would.

That was until the council had a meeting and she was ordered to do something that put her two jobs at battle.

"Why exactly must one of my critical patients be transferred up to your room?" The possessiveness in her voice seemed to set something off in Yami, as his eyes narrowed and his teeth lengthened.

"**Why?**" He growled out as a reply, questioning Ishizu's faith towards him and his orders.

"He is in no shape to be moved my King, it is best for him to stay with me where he can get immediate treatment, should he need it." She pushed her argument forward, bowing slightly after addressing him.

"He will recover better in my hands than he will in yours." Her King's voice seemed to have shown that he had calmed a tad bit, but by his eyes and his flared wings it was clear that he was not in any state to be argued with... But still, Ishizu did not fear him as much as most do...

"I am your palace's healer and a member of your council. He can be trusted best in my hands."

"That may be so, but he will not be able to make up for what he has been starved of for so long in...**Your** hands." A growl may of followed that one.

"My King, I am not considering you a liar, but I simply do not understand what he can lack from my hands which he will receive in yours."

"Priestess Ishizu." A new voice entered the conversation, "With all respect to your skill,you should simply just follow the orders of my cousin... Otherwise there is a chance the boy might not wake at all."

"And whatever do you mean, High Priest Seto, if the lake can not heal him enough for him to wake, then how can the King wake him?" If anything, she sounded offended.

"With no offence to your skills or the water's power, but Priestess Ishizu, my cousin and the boy share a bond, if he were to wake up to anyone it would be our King." She always found it odd how Seto could sound so stuck up but calm, but with the new information she just let out she would just have to calm her anger.

"Very well. He shall be in your chambers by noon, My King. But if he shows any signs of getting worse he shall be put back under my care." With that she gave a stiff bow before turning and walking away, her wings twitching with annoyance at being forced to submit to another's will.

"Of course, Ishizu." Was the distant voice she heard before closing the doors behind her exit.

When she had finally got back to the infirmary, she saw something that had been a very common sight in the month looking after the boy. Sitting beside the boy's bed side was a blonde haired boy, with large wings, slightly bandaged towards the base – still – who was gently stroking the boy's hair.

"Wheeler." She spoke up as she approached the bed, watching as the boy suddenly jumped up from his place and turned to face her.

"Pr-Priessttesse Ishhizuu!" Joey almost fell off his chair at her sudden presence.

"I see High Priest Seto is still teaching you how to pronounce things properly." She stated as she moved to join the blonde at the boy's bed side, not missing the few snarls and grumbles that followed her statement.

"I expect that you would like to know the fact that your friend shall be moved to the King's room by noon this day." Picking up some herbs that she had grinded this morning, she started undressing the boys bandages and gently rubbing them in to his skin and cuts, not for a second missing the look of panic that over came Joey's face.

"Wha?! Bu'!-"

"Syllables, Joey, Syllables, or do you wish me to talk to Seto about this?" The lecturing voice cut him short, making him bite his tongue to stop from any more of the words coming back. Taking a deep breath she watched from the corner of her eye as he started again.

"W-What... Buttt... He still neeeeedss m-medi- Med – I – Call attemption!" He let out the breath he had been holding and scrunched together his eyebrows at the pointless effort he had to put in.

"I agree, but as this boy has just been said to be The King's mate he would better recover in his chambers."

"B-Butt! He'lll beee so alone in there!" He earned a small nod from her at his pronunciation although she couldn't help but feel like laughing at how his voice sounded so desperate but his reason was so childlike.

"What makes you think that other people wont be allowed to see him?" She just continued rubbing the herbs in to what wounds and bruises were left, not having to try hard to hide her humour from her voice.

"It's the K- King's rooom throw..." Joey mumbled quietly to her, his head sinking down so that his fringe covered his eyes, his hands gripped tightly at Yugi's bedding as if desperately clinging for him to stay in the infirmary.

"Though," She corrected easily as she started to bandage the boy back up again before continuing, "The King will be protective if this boy is really meant for him... But I'm sure that you will be allowed to visit..."

"R-really?" He shot his head up, his face practically glowing with happiness. Ishizu was almost taken aback by the sudden change in his mood.

"Maybe you should get going, I'm sure the High Priest is going to be anger when he finds you are not in his chambers." She continued slowly wrapping the bandages, while she watched quietly as Joey flung himself from the chair he had been sitting in, gave one last pat to the boy's hair before running like a demon was on his heels spitting out colourful verbs and sounds.

Ishizu shook her head, letting a short sigh fall from her lips as her face twisted in to displeasure after seeing that the blonde had been bare footed. Oh how she could just be cruel and let Seto know all that his marked mate had been up to, but that would just be too cruel, the boy clearly was stressed with his friend but also he didn't want to submit to the ways that he was being shown – getting taught to speak right was about the most he would allow for people to do.

Turning back to her patient she removed her displeasured expression and turned it in to just a tired one, she in no way wanted the boy to be moved... He looked so fragile on the bed before her, when he had first been carried in here his lungs barely breathed on their own. It had been many long nights until he was stable enough to lay there without someone standing over him just in case he stopped breathing... or his lung collapsed again. To move him away from a place of healing, it was just too risky for her.

Lifting his body in to a seated position, she carefully reached for a pan of water – carried from the lake herself – before dipping a cloth in to it and wiping it over his face and neck, before slowly trailing down to his back and squeezing the liquid over his wings before slowly dabbing his mark.

She couldn't help but stare at the mark, it truly was the King's, the first time she saw it she doubted it with all her heart – despite connecting all the dots when she first saw the mark, she didn't want to believe that someone could hurt the King's mate to this point... that and she had always been a strong believer in the family lines... So when someone as petty as a slave turned out to be the King's mate... It was shocking to say the least. She would rather not believe it, but she knew that she would have to.

Her opinion did not matter for the moment anyway... She'd just have to do as she was ordered and help the boy, personal things aside.

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><p><strong>AN: It's short... I know sorry, but hopefully the next chapter - PROBABLY the LAST will be at least twice or three times as long as this one. It's almost done, it just needs me to stop being lazy and actually remember I had chapters to finish and upload =.=**

**Thank you for reading :D - please review if you want :D I should update soon. I really just want someone to have a conversation with at the moment, every time I don't update a story I stop talking to almost everyone =.= I really miss talking to you guys.**


	22. Wings Of Fate

**Wing's Of Fate: Chapter 22**

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><p>Everyone in the kingdom was as quiet as the surroundings, their actions becoming monotonous, a cycle set on repeat much like the sun.<p>

No one truly did anything new or intriguing anymore. It all became too bland and uninteresting. Especially for Yami.

The King ran his hand along the pale cheek before him, he enjoyed the warmth it emitted under his caress. His other hand made work of combing through the untameable locks, he had already brushed them many times while the boy slept. At first it had been tough, the bristles fighting against many knots, it was enough to bring a frown to his face at the memory of Yugi's previous life. However over time the matted clumps had become silky strands.

It was something had been constant in his life recently. After Ishizu's long hours and servants sweating while gathering water from the lake, it had finally started to pay off. The figure before him was almost completely healed, his heart beat a steady rhythm while he laid peacefully against Yami's bedding. Many bones had been set in placed and healed to perfectly to form the doll that way Yugi. Staying by his bedside and watching him heal had now become a continual event.

Before him Yugi was almost perfect, so healthy, so wonderful. It brought so much joy for him to see him like that. However sadly he could not be fully at peace. The wings that sat at Yugi's shoulder blades were a mess, their state had been unfixable. Ishizu had tried her best to reshape them, but the wings themselves looked nothing like what they were originally meant to. It was something Yami persistently tried ignored in favour of his mate's life being safe. He still hated the idea of Yugi's wings never being beautiful again though.

He had been assured that if Yugi continued to heal at this progressed speed that he may wake up sooner than expected from the unwavering sleep that he laid in.

The news had delighted Yami, over the time he had sat at the boy's side he had tried his best to create and expand their connection. His interest grew with the connection, the boy's friends dropping by to visit Yugi and to talk about his childhood. It made him feel so much closer.

It was through these times that he had been informed about how the high ranking members of his palace had all found their marked ones. He had barely registered anything when looking for his marked one, and during the hunt to find Yugi. At the time he hadn't even noticed his friends had been carrying their marked ones.

He had also learned much about Yugi. The key thing being that his name was Yugi Mutou. The very family name he had tried to investigate only to come up blank.

The King hummed over the thought while he continued to grazed his fingers over Yugi's cheek, enjoying the soft tingle of the bond between them. He had been very annoyed, almost distraught, the first time he had made skin to skin contact with Yugi, only to find that there was a blank feeling of a week bond. He had spent many weeks by Yugi's side trying to strengthen the bond to this point, where it would be unbreakable no matter what.

Many hours he had sat at Yugi's bedside, whether it was in the infirmary or in his own chambers, he desperately wanted to be the first person for Yugi to see when he woke up. If not he feared the work to strengthen the bond could all be for nothing. The idea of him not waking up at all had been pushed to the back of his mind and locked away, refusing to even admit it as a possible out come. Yugi was his marked mate. A mate strong enough to give him power and to stand by his side, he could get through this, he was made to.

At this point it had been eight weeks since Yugi have been moved to his chambers, he had glued himself to his side disregarding his work and putting it on to capable others who got the work done to his standard. He spent his days watching Yugi, tending to him and cleaning him, keeping the boy propped on his side to insure his wings could not be damaged more.

A beautifully crafted cherry wood brush was in his hand, a painting of some exotic flower on the back not even catching his interest as he pulled it gently through Yugi's well groomed locks for the third time that day.

It was not nearly as tiring as he had first thought it would be. He, A King, had hundreds of servants waiting at him hand and foot, had never even had a need to wash his own body before. But he took calm in stroking the brush through Yugi's hair, enjoying the feeling of fulfillment he received from the appearance of his hair after.

Sighing lightly he placed the finely made brush to one side before gathering one of Yugi's hands and gently petting it with his own. The skin was soft and smooth, much like a new born child's, much better to the brown mess it had been originally.

His wings fluttered as he brought the hand up to his lips, carefully breathing over the skin, letting his lips just touch it before carefully placing the hand back against Yugi.

A shiver ran through him at the thought of kissing Yugi's plump lips. But he didn't dare, not when Yugi was in such a poor state, he was in shape to be courted or to be ravished at this moment.

But it still gave him a sense of peace that he was at least able to kiss Yugi, even if it was only barely. The idea of kissing your marked mate was almost as fulfilling as the act of bonding itself, it was something that was hard wired in to everyone with a mark- Even those who hated each other found a sense of peace, love and happiness from being able to touch and kiss their marked mate.

He sat quietly trying to contain himself, he did not know how long he sat but he blinked for one moment before feeling that something strange was happening. Looking up he just saw Yugi's still figure laying on the bed, but something was off about it.

Staring at it intently he jumped when Yugi's hand jerked, his thumb twitching ever so slightly.

A cold sweat fell over him, his eyes grew wide as he flung himself up from his chair, uncomposed for a King but losing all of his well taught mannerisms in that one moment.

For a longer while he watched the body in shock, waiting for it to happen again, waiting for a sign that Yugi was indeed waking up. He stood there just watching, not even noticing the gentle trickle of sun that had once lit the room slowly fading as the sun began to set in it's constant pattern. Yugi's movement breaking the monotonous mood that had been set in place before.

It was pitch black by the time Yugi's hand repeated the action, Yami as if thrown out of a trance took a step back, "Yugi..", He whispered quietly to himself before taking a large breathe.

"ISHIZU!" A roar ripped from his throat, he could hear the echo repeating itself around the palace, running down every hall while Yami stood stiffly staring at Yugi with unblinking eyes.

"ISHIZUU!" He repeated, his wings raising as he noticed another twitch come from Yugi's hand, there was much less time between them now.

"ISHIZUUUU!" Yet again he roared. His voice not showing the desperation he felt, but instead coming off as an angry bellow.

Hurried footsteps came in no time, from where he stood he could hear many doors slamming and opening before his own was ripped open, creaking at the hinges as a flustered Ishizu showed at the door.

"He's Waking!" He gritted out, wings high watching the woman assess the situation with a frown.

"Oh.. Oh, my!" she finally exclaimed, hurrying over to the boy's side, going over all of his vitals and checking his movements. A constant twitch was now visible in three of his fingers.

Yami watched from the side as she quickly moved medicine and equipment to the bed side, taking a damp cloth and placing it on to the boy's forehead, the wetness of the cloth keeping it's grip to his head despite being laid on his side.

He watched closely, he sharply in too a breathe as glorious amethyst eyes opened.

"Yugi..?" He called, somewhat relieved but unsure as he pushed himself closer to the bed.

The eyes flickered to him and stared at him in a haze, closing and reopening a few times in a sluggish manner, before suddenly clearing and widening in shock.

"M-My King!" He cried out in a raspy voice, trying to push himself up to bow, only to be brought to the brink of tears by the movement as sever pain stabbed through his back.

"No, Little One. Stay down." Surprisingly gentle hands reinforced the words pushing him back down on to his side.

"Yugi, you must stay on your side. Your body has mostly healed from the incident, but yours wings are a mess. I tried my best to reshape them but as you were in such a deep sleep I was unsure of what exactly would be affected the most in terms of nerve endings." Ishizu explained from her position, taking pity on his panicked face. However it did not seem to help as Yugi didn't understand what exactly was going on let alone what a nerve ending was and how it would effect him.

"You are under the influence of heavy medicine to attempt to dull the pain, however we are not completely sure of how bad the pain would be when you awoke, so it may not be enough." she continued to explain, he understood that somewhat, but right now everything was coming at him in a such a rush it was hard to know what to focus on.

There was a long moment of silence in the air, only filled with Ishizu's work mixing medicine and checking vital signs, while Yugi tried to process the information provided. Yami stood silently watching all of the emotions flick over Yugi's face, not wanting to interrupt the boy.

For a moment Yugi's face contorted in to confusion, then it saddened before finally his eyes widened again, "M- My Win- wings?!" He croaked out, his throat dry from lack of use as he brought his hands to hide his face trying to curl away from the two before him.

"Little one... It will be okay-" He stopped as he tried to place a comforting hand on Yugi's shoulder but he only received a flinch from Yugi, his hand meeting plain air.

"Little one." He pushed.

"H-How... how did you find out?!" Yugi sobbed.

Yami stepped back for a moment, he realized what Yugi was sad about. Not his wings but instead the fact that he knew who Yugi was. It angered him, made his blood boil, at how upset he was over this, not even seeming to mourn the loss of surely once beautiful wings.

Without further thinking Yami gripped Yugi and pulled him up to press him against his chest, cradling him, taking the utmost care of his back. He completely blank Ishizu's calls in the background.

For a while they just stood like that, Yugi sobbing in to his shoulder while Yami held him close, relishing in the bond he felt between them, even through Yugi's sadness and pain. They stayed like that until Yugi's sobs decreased down to gentle sniffles, squirming every now and then in his arms, a bit shocked to be suddenly faced with such a strong bond when before there was none.

Yami leaned down and placed a soft peck on Yugi, enjoying the satisfaction that came over him before placing Yugi back on to the bed, making sure he laid on his side.

"Little one. You're safe now. Never worry about such people ever again." He cooed strongly to Yugi, it sounded odd with the gentle loved filled words being so strongly pushed, fingers soothing him gently as they ran surprisingly smoothly through his hair.

"My King-"

"Yami."

Yugi sat silently for a while, his breath caught at the stern reply, even with the permission he just got given it felt wrong to even think of addressing the King by name. But the gaze the King was giving him made him bow to his wishes.

"Ya..." He tried, "Yami." Tried again, enjoying the sound even though it came from his dry throat.

"That's right Little One." The King's voice sounded so strained, his eyes were even gazed slightly, he felt something odd flow through him, something akin to lust or pleasure but he wasn't too sure why, it was too low- almost like a hum – to have come from his person. He could only think that it came from the King, receiving such pleasure from just Yugi saying his name, it shocked him a little.

he King took a deep breath, composing himself before smiling down at Yugi, "You need not worry any more. We have the rest of our lives to straighten things out.", Yugi returned his smile hesitantly, feeling tired from his crying a moment ago.

"You should sleep." The King announced. Yugi nodded his head slightly, surprised at how he easy it was to follow the words, as he started closing his eyes and drifted on in to a black abyss.

Yami had stayed with Yugi the whole night, he simply sat there watching him just waiting for his next chance to see those coloured irises. He considered sleeping but found that when he laid down he could only think about his Little One, so he returned to sitting beside him and admired his features.

Unlike before when Yugi was in a coma like state, he now had slight movements, mumbles and gargles in his sleep with small jerks and twitches. He found it adorable to watch his marked mate.

It was only when the sun had started to peek in to the room that Yami noticed Yugi was heavily covered in sweat. He simply put a new dampened cloth on to his forehead, not believing it was anything serious, until Yugi started to thrash.

Screams tore from the Little One's throat.

His legs kicked from left to right, violent hitting a side table beside him. Yami tried to carefully contain the movements trying not to pin him and hurt him. Yugi was erratic, eventually Yugi managed to twist himself on to his back. A few sickening cracks followed before a blood curdling scream ripped through the room.

Yami didn't know what to do, but he pushed Yugi on to his side, neglecting any thoughts that it may injury him. From the feeling that throbbed through the bond, he was in far more pain than any pinning could ever cause him. He felt so helpless, just holding his lover tightly when he truly couldn't do anything, even just holding him like this was hurting him, but it was hurting less that being on his back had.

His nose twitched as he stiffened, his breathing long ago growing heavy as he could only watch when blood started gargling form Yugi's mouth. He panicked and shouted for someone. His wings had risen. He had called over and over, he wasn't even sure who he was calling for. But his throat soon hurt from the roars he screeched.

From that point on-wards he had no recollection of what had happened. A vague memory of hands dragging him away from where he could see Yugi's blood pooling. The scent so strong, so sickly.

He was sure the image of Yugi's blood stained lips would never fade from his memory, not for as long as he lived. That and the torn mess of Yugi's wings after the incident.

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><p>It had been later that Yami had been informed that some of Yugi's wounds had not healed as well as they had thought. When the Little One had the nightmarish dream, causing his original thrashing and screaming, he had knocked one of his ribs, effectively piercing through a segment of his lung. He should have reacted strongly from that, but because he fell on to his back the pain from his wings had over powered the feeling of his lung and he had continued thrashing, causing himself more damage and pain.<p>

After that night Yugi had been rushed to the infirmary for medical attention, Ishizu had tried her best to heal his lungs, and successfully managed to seal the wound with some technical medical method and healing water. When he was considered stable enough Ishizu made work of rearranging his wings again, however Yami was brought to pain when he was told that Yugi had awoke during the process screaming out in pain from the feeling of his broken wings being touched. Yami was severely upset, but at the same time a little happy, Yugi has also screamed his name during his awakening, it being out of pain upset him.

Yugi had been asleep since that operation. Yami had continued to stay by his side, tending and grooming him whenever it needed to be done. It pained him to watch Yugi in his nightmarish state, this time though they were unsure if he would ever wake. He was in a coma. One much deeper and stronger than the first one he had been in.

It didn't sit well with him, but he couldn't do anything about it. Yugi would wake when he was ready, but right now it seemed that his brain was too tormented by all that had happened when he was awake. His body and mind was just simply refusing to face the world.

As time went by Yami grew colder, more angry, he continued to return to Yugi's side though, feeling at peace next to the boy who he gently brushed the hair of. His marked mate was one with him and right now it was so frustrating for him to feel a bond but only feel a dull fuzz on the other side. But he felt that he loved Yugi, so he continued hoping that one day he would see those eyes open, that those plump lips would curve in to a smile and kiss him gently while his cute cheeks glow pink.

For now though Yugi was a porcelain doll who laid inside Yami's chambers, dressed in the finest of clothes, groomed and cleansed often to maintain his youthful appearance. Truly he looked like an angel laying. Yami had also changed, becoming more cold and cruel, ruling his kingdom with an iron fist, the rage of what had been done to his marked mate fueling most of his cruelty. Once before he had been able to keep his temper under check, but now he was a loose cannon, only calm just after meeting Yugi.

The council had once dared to suggest him trying to find another mate, in hopes of calming his temper, so he would not have to cling to the painful connection that was more or less one sided.

That member had his head separated from his shoulders in front of his whole council, before starting a long speech about how they had pushed him to find a mate to gain his full powers, now he had his true mate there was no need to find another. All while leaving crimson footsteps from the blood of the ex-member.

Everything had become very easy after that, no stupid requests or ideas and everything was done to an amazing standard, he as rather pleased with his palace.

Despite his cruel behavior he still treated his kingdom good, making sure there was never any starvation or excessive poverty. He still stayed around his high ranking members and friends, them not finding much of a problem with his new behavior.

Every once in a while he allowed one of their own marked mates to visit Yugi, they all had a small place in his heart for taking care of his marked mate so well and trying to protect him when he himself couldn't and didn't see who he was. At first they had been so frightened in front of his, especially after the first public execution, they had all dropped to their knees and bowed to him. He just simply scolded them playfully, saying they need not do so, however the white haired one still continued to attempt to.

Yami stayed by Yugi's side often, smiling gently at the pale face, button nose and long eyelashes. The boy was very girly looking.

He clung to the idea that one day Yugi would wake up, he always had food at the bedside table ready to feed him if one day he did awake. He refused to believe he wouldn't wake up. Because he would, he could feel it. Just like how he could feel that one day those beautiful wings would flutter in the wind once again.

The day finally came, three years later, when he sat by Yugi's bedside, those beautiful eyes opening looking up at him in a daze. He broke out in to a smile, his eyes widening just staring and taking in the sight he had waited so long to see again.

Joy flushed through him, his cheeks heating up a little as he stretched his smile further. Because right now, this kingdom was perfect, Yugi would love it. He was sure of it. He had made it in to the most perfect place for his marked mate. His mate would only see the best of the best.

Yugi looked at him tiredly, not fully understanding his dazed surroundings or the soft feeling of silk against his skin, but he smiled. Through his hazed eyes he could see Yami looking so happy, he could feel the love and warmth in the room flowing towards him and through the bond. As if it was contagious he felt happy, Yami's feelings flowing through him as he let a tired smile grace his lips.

Yami sat there for a while just staring happily in to Yugi's eyes, his hand caressing the soft hands in front of him before leaning in and kissing those lips he wanted so much.

The fact that he had once tried to hide himself from this man completely thrown out the window as he smiled. He could no longer deny his fate, not the fate that his wings carried with him, especially not when his mate looked so pleased to see him.

So Yugi returned the kiss, fully happy in that one moment that he and Yami were marked together, to be mated forever. To be each other's half. He was finally at peace.

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><p><strong>AN: I hope you enjoyed this. This is the final chapter of Wings of Fate. I am SOOO sorry this took so long to write. Honestly I was planning to write this a long time ago but I got so caught up with things. A while ago when I was trying to write out a new story I found a hand written version of this and I was amazed, I didn't even know I had written the whole thing out. So I decided that since it has been so long I might as well finally finish it.**

**Originally this was meant to be just a sad, bitter sweet ending. I originally wrote it so that Yugi didn't wake up, and left it off where he was just sleeping and Yami was at his bedside just waiting. However when writing it I decided it didn't seem write, it was so cold and I didn't like it, so I put in the last bit where Yugi finally wakes up - Sorry if that doesn't seem to fit, I did try to read over it but I wasn't too sure how to write a sweet Yami after just showing him to be a monster. But Either way I decided to end it like this. I might write another people want me to tie up the other character stories, but I don't know how long that will take to write, honestly you'll notice a completely different style between this chapter and my last, so I hope you don't mind that.**

**I hope you will excuse any errors in this chapter as it has not been beta'd and often I find it difficult to read through my writing, but I still tried to fix most errors.**

**I hope you enjoyed this story. It has been a lot of fun writing it, sadly it took so long to complete near the end, but I thank you all for so much support in this story :D I love you all so much, thank you :D**

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><p><strong>2106/14:  
>Just note update since I received a comment from a Guest user, I really wanted to reply to it because it was a critic, so I'm just writing a message to them or well every one here.<strong>

**This story over all isn't that great. I understand that there isn't a lot of build up and character development and over all I did try to tie the plot together. I don't like to say it but I do have an excuse for it. I started writing this story in 2011, had the idea for a story like this since the end of 2010- so just under 4 years ago I started writing this story. Originally I wrote it to improve my english scores in class (as i was in one of the bottom sets for english) and to try and improve my sentence structures. I think it is quite clear that my grammar and spelling isn't the best, it never has been and this is the best it has ever been - which is still pretty bad. I'm trying to improve it every day but it gets very confusing for me to see where exactly my punctuation should go and exactly how to arrange my words. So this story is a littered mess because of it, also I am pretty bad at reading through my work, when I do I end up cutting off any creative flow I have- in this chapter I did not write that it has been beta'd because I could not get a hold of my beta. Which is fair enough since it has been over 6 months since I have updated and maybe 8 since I spoke to her fully.**

**My character development and my plot line is pretty shabby, I'm sorry about that since I only really wrote this story on a whim, with the idea of a historical type theme with a palace and servants- so I ended up writing a clique story of a servant who was meant to be mated with the King but is hiding. To be honest I didn't have any idea more than that, I just wrote to see where it would go and when it came to a reason the servants were hiding I made it up on the spot. The story line would have perhaps been better if I wrote everything down when I first wrote this story, however around the 1st few chapters I had an amazing memory, I used to Role Play and would be able to remember every single one of my character names, history/back story, partner and point in the role play (this was with over 40 characters so :/). However during the times I had such long breaks and didn't update this story my memory became sooo bad, I forgot all of the plot stuff and only had the things I wrote in the chapters. So over all this story was patched together with just random ideas that seemed okay on their own, not really thinking how they'd affect the over all story. So the characters and the plot became patched and fragile, not really working or being developed.**

**Over all I'm not really proud of this story all that much, don't get me wrong even though it is a clique mess I like it, after all I wrote this threw times when I couldn't get the most simple of spelling correct. But I'm not really proud of it. A lot of people have pointed out that the story doesn't really seemed finished - even though this is the last chapter. Well I'm sorry but this chapter was a ditch attempt at closing this story, the writing was written at 4am one night a few months back, then was rewritten on to the computer at 9pm one random night. I always hated when people never finished stories, I would be left itching to know what happened at the ending and I'd spend days just thinking about what could have happened, wasting my time on something that would never be finished- So long ago I decided that no matter what I should finish my stories. It took a while but it is finished. I'm happy it's over because it has been like a weight on my shoulders through all those months I didn't update.**

**One day I might rewrite it, this time with better grammar, less plot holes and more character development. I'll take in to mind the review that 'Guest' left me. I always thought if I would get critics I would be sad, not knowing how to react, but instead I'm happy- After all you pointed out all the problems that I knew but never really thought in to it too deeply, always trying to just finish the story not caring about the content. It makes me feel like I should try harder to make sure that what I'm posting is actually something not so patch work like this story has turned in to.**

**Anyway I'm sorry for such a long little bottom note and comment, I think it looks like I'm making excuses but over the past 4 years of writing this fanfic a lot of stuff has just been swept under the rug by me, I'm sorry that this isn't the closure you're looking for- However I will not write a sequel to this story before it is rewritten to a standard that I can be happy with. If it is rewritten at all that is. If any one has any ideas on how I could improve it or have a solution to the plot holes - OR maybe saw something that hasn't been mentioned. Please let me know, that way if I do rewrite this story, it's going to be done right.**


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